Depending on your perspective, IT at the Patent and Trademark Office (http://www.uspto.gov) is either a state-of-the-art success or a billion-dollar train that might be running off the tracks.
In February, the Industry Advisory Council and the CIO Council singled out the agency’s Trademark Electronic Applications System, which lets users electronically file trademark applications, as one of the top five e-government programs of the year.
But in a June report, the Government Accountability Office lambasted PTO. GAO said the agency, after spending more than $1 billion, “is still not yet effectively positioned to process patent applications in a fully automated environment; moreover, when and how it will actually achieve this capability remains uncertain.”
Agency goals
Even a PTO study commissioned last year showed that its CIO office couldn’t handle agency automation goals, GAO pointed out. However, the report said, “USPTO’s director and new chief information officer have recognized the need to improve the agency’s planning and management of its automation initiatives.”
That is the most salient line, according to Texan David J. Freeland, the agency’s CIO since January. It was as a result of the PTO study, he said, “that undersecretary [Jon W.] Dudas brought me in. My primary concern was to make us more customer focused, as well as more efficient.”
TEAS is even more effective now than when it garnered the industry award, he said. E-filed trademark applications have increased from 8 percent in 2000 to 73 percent this spring and 91 percent this month, he said.
But in contrast, the electronic filing of patent applications has been a bust. Only an estimated 2 percent of patent applications came in electronically in 2004.
The system was doomed from the start, Freeland said. “The problem is, we didn’t work well with customers ... to ensure that they could use the application. They found the system difficult to use, the files they had didn’t work with it and the result was that the customers didn’t want to work with it. We have a new patent electronic filing system project under way. We are re-engineering that from end to end.”
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