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Washington, D.C.—President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today lashed out at a Bush administration proposal to divert into the general treasury $207 million in fee revenue generated by the Patent and Trademark Office, calling it “a disastrous and reckless plan.” NTEU represents about 2,250 PTO employees.

Kelley said NTEU intends to fight the proposal, which she said would lengthen the time for processing both patent and trademark applications and result in a sharp decline in PTO customer satisfaction, as well as endanger as many as 700 PTO jobs.

“The administration claims that its fiscal 2002 budget proposal for PTO is a 10 percent increase,” Kelley said. “Even if that were so, an increase of that magnitude would be insufficient to meet the rising workload at PTO.” The planned diversion “seriously compounds the problems” of an inadequate budget proposal, she said.

PTO collects significant revenue from application and other fees from individuals and businesses seeking patents and trademarks. For at least the past 10 years, both the executive and legislative branches have diverted portions of these fees into general revenues. The diversion in the current fiscal year is $117 million.

“That robs the agency of money it needs to meet its obligations to the American public,” Kelley said. It prevents the agency from aggressively pursuing modernization of its technology—particularly its stated goals of encouraging applicants to use electronic communications in their dealings with the agency—and has a “damaging impact” on both the quality and timeliness of patent and trademark application processing.

Applications for both patents and trademarks are rising sharply, fueled in part on the trademark side of PTO by the growth of the Internet.

Kelley said the proposed $207 million diversion by itself would increase the time it takes for first action on trademarks from 6.6 months to eight months and extend final resolution from 19 months to 20. Meanwhile, patent “pendancy”—the length of time it takes to fully process an application, and the key measure of accomplishing the mission at PTO—would rise from 26.2 months to 26.7 months, she said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.