As more and more IT companies file patent applications, a group representing patent examiners is praising a recent government report on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office calling for process reforms.

The Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) said that a Government Accountability Office study released last week supports their call for an overhaul of the Patent and Trademark Office. Specifically, it backs up examiners' push to provide more time for quality reviews of applications.

In its 2006 annual report, the Patent and Trademark Office said it received a record 440,000 patent applications and issued a similar record 183,187 patents with a 3.5% error rate. These after a record 409,532 patent applications were filed, and 165,485 patents were issued in 2005 with a 4.5% error rate.

POPA represents more than 5,200 Patent and Trademark Office examiners and other patent professionals. The group agreed with a GAO finding that high attrition rates among examiners is apparently due to "the stress resulting from the agency's outdated production goals." The GAO report relied on responses from about 22% of all Patent and Trademark Office examiners.

Sixty-seven percent said the Patent and Trademark Office set unrealistic production goals, and that was the main reason they may decide to leave. Seventy percent of patent examiners reported that they work unpaid overtime to meet production goals. The GAO report concluded that the agency's goals conflict with the amount of time patent examiners need to review applications and they undermine hiring efforts.

POPA president Robert Budens agrees.

"The USPTO can hire people, it just can't keep them," he said in a prepared statement. "The agency says that it can't hire its way out of the backlog to justify many of its ill-conceived reforms. But it would in fact be able to cut the backlog if it could keep the employees it hires, and the GAO's study shows that the patent office can do that by giving examiners the time and tools they need."

The GAO study noted that from 2002 through 2006, one patent examiner left the Patent and Trademark Office for nearly every two hired.

Next, POPA will push for Congress to pass a law requiring examiners' deadlines to be based a formula that weighs average application fees and examiners' hourly pay.

Improving the patent approval process is becoming paramount as IT companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Google are flooding the office with application requests. At the same time, more patents are being disputed. The Patent and Trademark Office reported 3,349 contested patent cases in 2006. More recent examples include Motorola and Aruba as well as Verizon and Vonage.