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Washington, D.C.—While gains have been made in both productivity and efficiency at the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), the leader of the union representing more than 2,300 PTO employees said the agency and its employees could do even more except for the unfair diversion of fee income from patent and trademark applicants into the general treasury.

That was the assessment of PTO operations offered to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property by President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents some 1,900 employees in the patent office and another 450 in trademark operations.

The NTEU president objected to an administration proposal to divert $163 million in revenues from a proposed surcharge on patent and trademark application fees. As she has argued forcefully in the past, Kelley said “we believe PTO should keep all of the revenues from the fees it collects.” The union leader called it “unfair to the inventors that they pay a fee for a service from which they are not getting the full benefit.” PTO receives no appropriated funds; it operates on fees paid by patent and trademark applicants.

President Kelley noted that the higher fees, if retained by PTO, would provide the agency with the resources it needs to hire more staff, implement a better training program and improve recruitment and retention incentives.

On related PTO matters, Kelley noted that staff turnover in its trademark operations is down and customer satisfaction “is headed in the right direction.” The Trademark Office, whose NTEU-represented attorneys process trademark applications, “has turned the corner,” the NTEU leader said, attributing the improvements to “the leadership of current and recent commissioners, cooperative labor-management relations” and what she called “the poking and prodding” of the leaders of the subcommittee.

As for PTO’s patent operations, President Kelley expressed the views of a wide range of employees concerned about the potential for the loss of their jobs as a result of the administration’s push to contract to the private sector an increasing amount of the work of federal employees.

“Not only is the work of PTO employees an inherently governmental function,” Kelley said, “applicants have the right to an expectation of the privacy afforded them by dealing with federal employees.”

Clearly, she added, “this work should not be turned over to the private sector” in a drive to reach “an arbitrary quota” set by the administration, which has directed agencies to make available to the private sector over the next two years 15 percent of jobs considered to be commercial in nature.

The NTEU leader also raised her concerns over the impact on Patent Office employees of a move to new facilities in Alexandria, VA, and urged agency management to “make sure this does not result in the loss of productive and experienced PTO employees.”

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