The manager
A vision for intellectual property examination – 2030
Leslie did not consider herself to have an easy life, but in all fairness, she had to admit, it was a good one. Her husband and two grown children were busy with their careers and cared for each other. Her work at the USPTO was satisfying, and gave her a sense of public service and of benefiting the applicants. And those two halves of her life, home and business, could be kept in balance- by carefully timing the demands of one into the less busy times of the other.
It was just the normal hassles, the day-to-day bothers that annoyed her; they never ceased. She knew that those hassles were what justified her comfortable salary, which in the Washington suburb of Alexandria was fully required for her not extravagant lifestyle. But still, it would be nice if they took a break, so to speak.
When she first started at the USPTO as a young examiner there had been five buildings on campus, six if you counted Madison East and West as two. Then, one by one, the buildings had closed, as regional offices around the country opened and home offices around them started to flourish. Two, three, eight, twenty regional offices opened, each the sun for a constellation of employees working in their apartments, houses, local conference centers and even street cyber cafés. The Office had truly gone national, thanks to high tech communications. Her husband Girard had even suggested that they move back to Texas, and work from the remote office in that state, but only jokingly. They both enjoyed the Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap, the Smithsonian and the other diversions of the capital city too much. So as Leslie rose in the USPTO management ranks, and as the Office headquarters shrank to just a single building, her hassles grew.
As a senior Director Leslie was responsible for managing 500 examiners, spread across 16 states, 2 provinces and 8 countries. Though Leslie had been trained mainly in patent law, which was a benefit to the 472 patent examiners reporting to her, the USPTO was truly an intellectual property facility, and 8 design examiners, 12 trademark examiners and 8 copyright registrars were hers to schedule, lead, teach, discipline and inspire; that is, hers to manage. Tools to accomplish this impossible management task were of the same style as the original installations when she first joined the USPTO, but were far more refined. They included instant audio and video communications across the Internet and across the world, multi-person collaboration on documents, instant messaging and other office facilities. Of course person-to-person interviews were still highly regarded; so much gets done when one can speak freely.
But as always, the key to managing was knowing her people, a job she did well. She studied her people: their credentials, their skills and abilities, their likes and dislikes, their time zones and work schedules, and what motivated them. Much was different now from when she was first made a supervisor: she managed some employees, but mostly independent professional examiners. A few were in this building, Madison, but almost all lived relatively far away. Some new prospective examiners were trained for a term at the Office, but most now were graduating with a degree in Patent Examination from top tier colleges, on all continents. After certification by the Offices, examiners chose where to practice- within 75 miles of one of the regional centers, or in any location they preferred in a Trilateral country, as long as the location fit certain criteria. Just last year Leslie was pleased to see that a 10th professional examiner had located around Chartres, in France, so she could authorize a conference center there. It was a lovely area which she had visited for meetings and interviews, perhaps, more interviews than were strictly necessary. She still remembered that delicious French cuisine from that nearby restaurant that she and Girard had enjoyed. Perhaps she should set up some refresher technical and legal training for the examiners there, that she would have to oversee. Now that was a good idea.
Innovation was remaining the modus operandi at all intellectual property offices, and though she welcomed the challenge of change, it certainly made her job more difficult. Most recently she was considering the new positions of intellectual property customer representatives, and how she was to staff them. It was fine for the "Execs" to conceive of a single Trilateral representative to service an applicant, to advise him on his patent, trademark and copyright needs, to schedule application flows to the Trilateral Offices and to other Offices through WIPO. But wherever was she to find qualified people to staff these positions? Perhaps she should advertise in the intellectual property bar publications, to attract older, more experienced intellectual property attorneys who may, for one reason or another, wish to enter government service. Certainly the concept seemed interesting: a single intellectual property office representative to guide the customer in his choice of property protections, work with the applicant's attorneys, and yet be part of the system sufficiently to schedule the work to be done in all the Offices in accordance with the Offices' capacities and availabilities. She would have to be very careful in this selection; she would be working closely with this person on all cases. She would like to model the selection on that first person she hired for the position, that guy from The Hague. He did a masterful job on that complicated embedded wrist watch case, making all the right contacts to get the applications examined and registered quickly.
But all in all, she was surviving- thriving, even, as some may admit. Production was good; backlogs were a bad memory from the past. Examiners were happy to bid on cases, and some were good enough to command the highest fees for their work, being constantly requested. All received good compensation for the work they cared to commit to do. Applicants were pleased to receive quick, high quality examinations for their standard patents, utility models and trademarks, with specialized protections for those new technologies and copyrights being registered promptly. And they certainly were quick to show appreciation for the best examiners, within the ethical guidelines of the profession, to be sure. Not like the old days, with them bemoaning the system all the time.