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Brought to you by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
Federal Reports
Report Date
Agency Reviewed / Investigated
Report Title
Type
Location
Department of Commerce
The United States Patent and Trademark Office Needs to Strengthen Its Patent Examination Quality Review Program
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.
DHMG’s Oversight of the Enterprises’ Compliance with Duty to Serve Requirements Was Not Fully Effective Due to Incomplete Evaluation Documentation and Outdated Guidance
During fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the Field Operations Review Team completed audits of 72 delivery units to assess delivery operations and property conditions. We found about 800,000 delayed mailpieces across these delivery units. Most of the delayed mail was not accurately reported. We also identified arrow key management and scanning issues, including missing and unsecured keys and carriers scanning packages away from their intended delivery address. We summarized our findings and made recommendations to district management in our capping reports.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General initiated this project to describe the lessons we have identified from select EPA OIG and U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, oversight reports to help inform the EPA’s future efforts to prepare for and respond to natural disasters.
Summary of Findings
We reviewed 26 EPA OIG and GAO reports that include findings related to the EPA’s prior disaster response actions. From those, we identified seven programmatic themes: (1)interagency and external stakeholder cooperation, (2) risk communication to the public,(3)data collection and characterization of risks, (4) policy development, (5) resource limitation, (6)contract management, and (7) resilience of contaminated sites and infrastructure. These themes had lessons that may allow the EPA to be better prepared for and respond to a natural disaster in the future. These reports made 79 recommendations to the EPA. Although we did not evaluate the timeliness or quality of the EPA’s corrective actions to these recommendations, it is imperative that the EPA implement recommendations that could provide a more efficient and effective response to future natural disasters.
