USPTO Director Michelle Lee before Congressional committee as to examiner hours issue

Lisa Rein covered the appearance of Michelle Lee before a Congressional committee on 13 Sept 2016:



U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle K. Lee told lawmakers Tuesday that she and her team “do not tolerate any kind of attendance abuse” and promised that employees who commit fraud are disciplined.

“It’s not fair to the American public,” Lee told members of the House Judiciary Committee in response to queries from Republicans about an inspector general investigation released in August.

(...)

[David] Smith’s office determined that the full scale of fraud — about 2 percent of the total hours worked by the examining corps — is likely double those numbers, because investigators analyzed the data conservatively to give employees the benefit of the doubt.

On Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) chairman of Judiciary’s subcommittee on courts, intellectual property and the internet, said that “while a great many examiners work diligently to do their jobs,” time fraud is an offense to American inventors.


link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/09/13/patent-chief-tells-lawmakers-time-and-attendance-fraud-is-not-tolerated/#comments


See also: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/295542-fixing-why-uspto-issues-low-quality-patents-should-be