The United States Patent and Trademark Office Needs to Strengthen Its Patent Examination Quality Review Program

View Report

Title Full

Date Issued

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Submitting OIG

Department of Commerce OIG

Agencies Reviewed/Investigated

Department of Commerce

Components

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Report Number

OIG-25-029-A

Report Description

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issues patents based on its examination of applications for compliance with Patent Act statutes and relevant case law.

USPTO’s Office of Patent and Quality Assurance (OPQA) performs independent quality reviews of examiner office actions to ensure decisions to either allow or reject a patent claim comply with all legal requirements. OPQA’s reviews are used to generate and report USPTO’s statutory compliance measures for quality. Our objective was to determine the effectiveness of quality reviews of continuing patent applications completed in FYs 2021–2023.

We found that USPTO needs to strengthen its quality review program to be more effective at improving patent quality. Specifically, (1) USPTO did not consistently use the results of OPQA reviews to improve the quality of continuing application examination, (2) OPQA did not ensure quality assessments were performed on compliant quality review findings, and (3) USPTO did not report certain patent examination quality errors in its annual performance reports.

These issues resulted from incomplete and insufficient policies and procedures. We made six recommendations to help USPTO strengthen its quality review program and promote high-quality patent examination and improved patent quality.

Report Type

Audit

Agency Wide

Yes

Number of Recommendations

Questioned Costs

Funds for Better Use

Report updated under NDAA 5274

External Link

https://www.oig.doc.gov/reports/?entry=43678

Open Recommendations

This report has 6 open recommendations.

Recommendation Number	Significant Recommendation	Recommended Questioned Costs	Recommended Funds for Better Use
1	No	$0	$0
We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to update agency-wide policies and procedures explicitly requiring SPEs to (1) take necessary actions to correct OPQA-identified quality errors and (2) coach patent examiners on the errors.
2	No	$0	$0
We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to develop requirements for TCs to monitor (1) actions taken by SPEs to correct OPQA-identified quality errors and (2) coaching that SPEs provide to patent examiners on the errors.
3	No	$0	$0
We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to develop policy that requires supervisory reviews of compliant OPQA quality findings and that the results of these reviews be documented and evaluated to ensure compliant findings are accurate.
4	No	$0	$0
We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to develop and document a methodology for OPQA consistency audits that ensures quality reviewers with low levels of noncompliant findings are identified and evaluated.
5	No	$0	$0
We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to ensure results of OPQA’s random and robust quality reviews, including double patenting errors, are included in USPTO’s annual performance reports.
6	No	$0	$0
We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO direct the Commissioner for Patents to regularly evaluate OPQA quality review results to ensure pertinent patent examination quality information is included in USPTO’s annual performance reports.