Some of the 8,300 patent examiners, about half of whom work from home full time, repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in, and many were receiving bonuses for work they didn’t do. And when supervisors had evidence of fraud and asked to have the employee’s computer records pulled, they were rebuffed by top agency officials, ensuring that few cheaters were disciplined, investigators found. . . . ...the agency’s army of examiners and other officials has been falling behind, with a backlog of patent applications swelling to more than 600,000 and estimated waiting times of more than five years. . . . They tend to be near the top of the federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year. . . . In one, an examiner missed 304 hours of work in a year but was paid for the time. Despite warnings, this examiner kept cheating and was caught twice but not fired. Another examiner claimed to have worked 266 hours for which there was no evidence she was on the job, and she received $12,533 in pay. She was never charged with time fraud because an assistant deputy commissioner refused her supervisor’s request to pull computer records, but instead she was charged with a lesser offense of not responding to a supervisor’s repeated attempts to get in touch with her. According to a patent official with knowledge of the case, the woman was never required to pay the government back. . . . More than 70 percent of the 80 managers interviewed also told investigators that a “significant” number of examiners did not work for long periods, then rushed to get their reviews done at the end of each quarter... washingtonpost/politics/patent-office-filters-out-worst-telework-abuses-in-report-to-watchdog/2014/08/10/cd5f442e-1e4d-11e4-82f9-2cd6fa8da5c4_story.html
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 01:44:27 +0000
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