Alleged Telework Abuse at PTO Highlighted at Joint House Judiciary, Oversight Committee Hearing
House members and Commerce Department officials criticized alleged abuse by some employees within the Patent and Trademark Office’s telework program and its hiring practices (see 1411100040), in a joint House Judiciary and Oversight committees hearing Tuesday. The PTO employees who…
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allegedly abused the telework program already should’ve been fired, said House Appropriations Committee member Frank Wolf, R-Va., in prepared testimony. Wolf said he’s a “huge advocate” of telework programs, but that the PTO needs stronger enforcement policies for those programs. Commerce’s 2014 investigation uncovered that a PTO “senior official intervened in the hiring process to ensure that a nonselected candidate, who was the fiancé of a close relative of the official, was ultimately selected for a position as a trademark examiner,” said Todd Zinser, Commerce inspector general, in prepared remarks. Ninety-five percent of PTO paralegals who participated in the Patent Hoteling Program had “insufficient work assigned to them over a four-year period despite a significant and growing backlog of appeals,” he said. The PTO received four “whistleblower” complaints in 2012 alleging abuse of the telework program, said Margaret Focarino, PTO commissioner for patents, in prepared testimony. “The USPTO investigated the claims, immediately took action to address issues raised during the investigation, and subsequently submitted a report to the Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General." That report posited eight recommendations to improve the telework program, said Focarino. “We began implementing these recommendations and taking other actions even before submitting the report.”