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The Impact of the New Count System

By just_n_examiner

It's been almost a year now since the Office fully implemented its new count system. (Some provisions took effect in November 2009, the rest in February 2010.)

The details of the changes were summarized here.

So how are things working out?

Well, that's a good question. I haven't seen any official feedback from the Office regarding whether they've gotten the results that they were seeking (other than the decision by the Joint Count System Task Force in August to let the provisions of the new system continue for another fiscal year without substantive changes, which was understandable given the fact that the changes had been fully implemented for less than seven months at that point, hardly enough time to make a meaningful assessment).

For me, the impact has been pretty much limited to two areas: production and workflow.

My production for FY 2010 was actually about the same as it has been for the previous few years. Since the new count system gives examiners more counts for first actions, and fewer counts for working on RCEs, you'd have to assume that I worked on more first actions and fewer RCEs. This is presumably more consistent with the Office's goals than the previous count system, since they approved the count system changes.

The Office has tools set up so that examiners can track their production, under both the old and new count systems. I went back to see how my production would have been under the old count system, and not so surprisingly, my production would have been somewhat underwhelming under the old system. It wouldn't have gotten me fired, but it certainly wouldn't have gotten me any bonuses either.

It's not that I made some major and conscious change in the way that I've done my work. The fact is, though, that over the course of any given bi-week, I (and presumably other examiners also) will normally check my counts to make sure that I'm not falling too far behind my production requirements. Not that it's a big problem if it happens occasionally, but if I'm short counts, I'd at least like to know about it. When it looks like I'm coming up short, I'll adjust the order of cases I'm working on, if I can, to compensate.

A while back I discussed the proposition that regardless of what performance requirements the Office imposed on the corps, examiners can change the manner of their examination to satisfy them (within reason, I would hope). I suppose the fact that I've apparently changed how I do my job to maintain my production in light of the new count system might tend to support that proposition.

So how was I able to adjust my examination to maintain my production?

Well, the new count system made it pretty easy. It includes workflow provisions whereby RCEs are placed on examiners' Special New docket instead of their Amended docket, meaning that there is no strict time limit on how soon RCEs are acted upon. Instead of requiring that they be acted on within 2 months (as with amendments), RCEs are now placed at the end of a queue for which examiners are only required to process one application (normally the one with the oldest effective filing date) every two bi-weeks.

This means that if a new Continuation or Divisional application is added to an examiner's docket, it will likely be placed in front of most RCEs on an examiner's Special New docket, before many previously docketed RCEs.

The result for me? A greatly inflated Special New docket that is full of RCEs.

Full post as published by Just a Patent Examiner on January 04, 2011 (boomark / email).