Deficiencies in USPTO’s Backup and Restoration Process Could Delay Recovery of Critical Applications in the Event of a System Failure and Adversely Affect Its Mission

For our audit of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Patent Capture and Application Processing System (PCAPS), our objective was to determine whether USPTO has adequate data recovery and contingency plans in place to ensure operational availability of PCAPS.We found that (1) USPTO has no assurance that it can restore critical applications in the event of system failure and (2) USPTO’s continued delay in updating legacy systems rendered a $4 million-per-year alternate processing site inadequate and impractical.