Reprinted from: NTEU Bulletin [National Headquarters]; Vol. LVIII,  Number 1

 Dec 2000 / Jan 2001

Agency Profile

Invent Something?

     Here’s a term most people don’t often hear, but more than 2,300 NTEU members work with it every day, and it affects everyone in the country all the time.

     The term is “intellectual property”— some product of the human mind, like an idea, invention, product symbol, even use of a color—and it’s the job of NTEU members at the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to protect the commercial rights of the person who thought of it. NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley called their work “central to encouraging creativity and strengthening our economy.”

     Some 1,900 PTO employees research patent applications and provide a range of support and administrative services. They’re represented by Chapter 243 (Patent and Trademark Office), chartered in late 1984. Another 320, all attorneys in PTO’ s Trademark Division, are represented by Chapter 245 (Trademark Society), chartered about six months later. Melvin White is Chapter 243 president; Howard Friedman leads Chapter

245.

     “I like the idea of being accountable for helping effectuate change,” said White, a 20-year PTO veteran elected president in April 1999. He’d served his chapter as chief steward virtually from its beginning.

     For Friedman, a long-time leader among PTO’s trademark attorneys, helping make a positive difference for people is reinforced by the chance to strengthen his chapter, providing others “with the opportunity to make their contribution to a better workplace.”

     Both see a growing interest in the role of NTEU, particularly as those efforts translate into workplace gains. Friedman said many in Chapter 245 are anxious to play a meaningful role in deciding such matters as workload issues, alternative work schedules and flexiplace.

     At Chapter 243, White, too, sees a greater appreciation for NTEU, especially among longer-service employees “who knew what it was like years ago.” The challenge, he said, is to involve newer, younger employees who have less of an institutional memory of life at the agency.

     PTO, a bureau of the Commerce Department, handles more than 500,000 patent and trademark applications annually; and the growth of the Internet and electronic commerce could drive those numbers sharply higher. “The demand for software and [Internet] ‘dot-corn’ marks” is enormous, Friedman said.

     A patent grants a monopoly right to produce, sell or otherwise profit from things like an invention, process or significant product improvement, usually for 20 years from filing the application.

     A trademark—that tiny letter ‘R’ [for ‘Registered’ with PTO] within a small circle on a product or its advertising material—protects consumers from deception in the marketplace. Manufacturers use it to distinguish their products from those of competitors. These aren’t the only protections afforded intellectual property; copyrights—for a poem, say, or a song or short story—are another, but these come from the Library of Congress.

     Friedman and White see both problems and opportunities in an agency workload growing at more than 10 percent a year. There are new trademark hires, but training and equipment needs aren’t keeping up, Friedman said.

     White said PTO is moving “as fast as it can” toward a fully-automated system, with the possible loss of several hundred support and administrative jobs in coming years. “I tell them they’ve got to do much more in the way of training” for bargaining unit employees, he said, “and to promote from inside.”

     Both leaders said they hope labor-management partnership at PTO can be a more productive vehicle. Top management support for partnership hasn’t always filtered down to the front-line managers. One result is that agency surveys in recent years have shown relatively low employee satisfaction levels of about 50 percent.

     Some improvements have come from the work of the Partnership Council at PTO. Last spring, PTO adopted council recommendations and implemented several changes designed to improve the quality of work life at the agency. These included eliminating sign-in/sign-out sheets; expanding arrival and departure times during the work day, adopting a “mid-day flex” program that allows employees to split their shifts on the same day, and establishing a casual dress policy for Fridays.

     Later in the year, the council built on that momentum with successful recommendations for further workplace changes, including an increase to $65 per month in the transit subsidy, in line with an administration executive order; expansion of the casual dress policy to daily; more flexible work schedules allowing employees to vary the days and hours they work; and a planned program to permit employees to buy home computers from a vendor at reduced cost,.

     White said he’s pleased with the improvements, but warned that agency attention to issues of training, promotional opportunities, retention and at-risk jobs could take a back seat to the “continuing pressure” to reduce the time lag - on average, nearly two years for a patent and more than a year for a trademark - between filing an application and final action on it.

     “The focus here is reducing” that period, White said “and it should be on making it a better place for people to work.”

     Friedman cited Chapter 245’s “growing frustration” over “strict production standards” that are part of life in the Trademark Division. High turnover there is fueled in part by the attractive salaries available to experienced intellectual property lawyers in the private sector.

     PTO had an opportunity to address that in recent years when Congress was debating legislation to make PTO a “performance-based organization” or PBO. NTEU supported early legislation that would have broadened bargaining rights to encompass bargaining over pay but that legislation proved contentious and failed. Compromise “PBO” legislation did win approval last April; it frees PTO from some government procurement regulations and allows its computer modernization to move ahead on an accelerated timetable.