[E-trademarks] PTO abandoning remote work? Note Federal telework Act

[Laura Geyer]

At least one of the big unions representing workers in 30+ agencies has already sued over at least one of the orders (might be the one that is intended to strip a number of employment protections from senior civil servants like [almost everyone I know] including career folks at the PTO. Certainly any employee affected by any of the EOs or the unions that represent them has/have standing. That one EO is intended to return the federal bureaucracy to the patronage system that was in place until reforms in the 1900s. You see, such senior federal employees are members of the “Deep State” and disloyal, and such disloyal people must be replaced with people who the current admin feels are loyal.

Again, this was all said out loud! This is all going to work so well. There were also specifically targeted categories that are to be got rid of ASAP – any employee and any division that has been in any way involved in DEI efforts and also any that were or are involved in environmental advocacy were identified.

If they’re allowed to do this, we can expect a pretty comprehensive brain drain in the loss of thousands of years of institutional knowledge and substantive expertise at the PTO and everywhere in the government.

Which is the publicly stated goal. They want those people gone.

Laura Talley Geyer | Of Counsel

ND Galli Law LLC
1200 G Street, N.W., Ste 800
Washington, DC 20005
Tel: (202) 599-9019 (direct)
https://ndgallilaw.com/laura-geyer/
https://ndgallilaw.com/

From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Catherine Goe via E-trademarks
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2025 3:52 PM
To: for trademark practitioners <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Catherine Goe <goecat at gmail.com>
Subject: [E-trademarks] PTO abandoning remote work? Note Federal telework Act

EXTERNAL EMAIL
There's more than meets the eye here.  See the link below for "History, Legislation & Reports" from U.S. Office of Personnel Management re: the Federal telework Act.
Born of the invention of enabling technology.  Note long History, rationale and benefits sought, e.g., cost cutting..
Congressional action required to negate legislation which is the apparent intent of the Executive Order?
And, assuming there are grounds to challenge the Executive Order, who could/would bring such an action?
Cat Goe, TM Paralegal

https://www.opm.gov/telework/history-legislation-reports/


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dan Feigelson via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com<mailto:e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>>
Date: Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] PTO abandoning remote work?
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com<mailto:e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>>
Cc: Dan Feigelson <djf at iliplaw.com<mailto:djf at iliplaw.com>>



I don't do TM work (not sure how I got on this list), but I can say that from the patent side, they completely screwed up with the offices in Detroit, Denver and San Jose.

What they SHOULD have done, and SHOULD do, is assign the entirety of each art unit to one of their physical offices, and require employees to physically show up for work. It would vastly improve examination quality. For example, all of group 1600 (which examines inter alia pharmaceuticals) should be physically in the same office. I don't care if it's Alexandria or one of the other three, but put them all in one physical office. It would improve training, and it would allow for better retention of institutional memory, which would lead to more uniform and better examination.

That's not what they did, and I doubt that's what they're going to do. I suspect the bean counters look only at the cost of rent of physical office space, and not at the cost to the public of poor patent examination (a cost which is difficult to quantify in any event). And as mentioned earlier in this thread, there's the union, which opposes any changes, and people who don't want to move, which is understandable in the short-term, but not something the PTO should be factoring in. (It's great to be a monopoly and not have to worry about whether or not you're giving the public you serve the best possible service.)

No idea if the same can be said for TM examination.

Dan

On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 9:25 PM Edward Timberlake via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com<mailto:e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>> wrote:
Also, for anybody not familiar:

The word "telework" perhaps tends to bring to mind a situation where there's a physical building that can house all of the employees but where (at least some of) the employees may have the option of working from elsewhere.

The USPTO has no such building.

If all of the employees were required physically to come to Alexandria, there'd be nowhere for (most of) them to work.


--
E-trademarks mailing list
E-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com<mailto:E-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
http://oppedahl-lists.com/mailman/listinfo/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20250121/8755bc58/attachment.html>