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Washington, D.C.—With trademark applications stacking up, and processing times increasing, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is about to seriously compound an earlier error of a staff layoff by imposing harsh and unworkable production standards on its remaining employees, the head of the union representing trademark employees said today.

“When PTO laid off more than 100 trademark attorneys 18 months ago, we said that would have a serious adverse impact on customer service,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

“That is exactly what has happened, and now the agency is trying to force its remaining trademark attorneys to work under a new, unfair and completely unworkable performance appraisal plan (PAP) that will only compound the problems,” she added.

NTEU represents some 1,750 PTO employees in two chapters, including about 260 trademark attorneys.

In 2002, PTO laid off the trademark attorneys, claiming they weren’t needed because the workload was about to decrease. However, with more than 265,000 trademark applications filed every year, the new case backlog has increased to some 105,000 from 63,000—since the layoff.

What’s more, the time for ‘first actions’ on trademark applications has risen by nearly two months, to 6.1 at the end of March, and the time for disposal of applications is now about 19.3 months. Additionally, in March of this year, 27,000 cases were filed—the highest monthly total since May of 2001.

But even in the face of this evidence, the agency is continuing to move ahead with plans to impose a new PAP, with changes so sweeping that trademark attorneys who earned an outstanding appraisal under the current system would, with the same production level, be rated only marginal or even unacceptable employees.

For example, the proposed PAP would require action on files in a compressed time frame, with each single unexcused late file per quarter knocking an employee’s rating down one level. Moreover, the level of perfection in various job functions to which trademark attorneys would be held is so stringent as to be unworkable, Kelley said.

An examining attorney with a success rate of 99.8 percent in what is known as the statutory refusal category would be rated outstanding; one who performs at a success rate of 99.5 percent in this category, however, would be rated as only marginal.

Beyond setting unrealistic standards for accuracy and timeliness, the proposed PAP has a number of serious problems related to changes demanded by the agency in assessing employees’ production rates. The impact of these changes would be to pressure employees to take shorter vacations spread out during the year rather than longer vacations at specific times, such as during the summer months.

“PTO management made a serious error in judgment with its layoff in 2002,” President Kelley said. “All this new proposal would do is compound that problem, hurt the customers the agency is designed to serve and have a crippling impact on employee morale. None of it makes any sense.”

Kelley said she is hopeful the Senate Judiciary Committee will address issues around the proposed PAP at a confirmation hearing next week for Jon W. Dudas, who was nominated in March as Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and director of PTO.

NTEU is the largest independent union of federal employees, representing some 150,000 workers in 29 agencies and departments.