New Website Creates Place to Examine the Examiners

    By Donald Zuhn --

USPTO Examiners, a website that bills itself as a place to "examine the examiners," recently opened its (virtual) doors for business.  While the site's creator (or creators) have yet to be identified, the same may no longer be true for some examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  According to the site's "About Us" page, USPTO Examiners was created so that patent practitioners and inventors would have a place where they could review, rank, and investigate USPTO examiners.  The site encourages practitioners and inventors who have interacted with an examiner to report on their experiences with that examiner, including their opinions about the examiner's knowledge of the law and technology and the examiner's accessibility.  The website contends that the website's "online collaborative environment" will eventually prove to be a valuable resource in crafting prosecution strategy for particular applications.  As of Thursday evening, two comments (one good and one bad) had been posted regarding two different examiners (one allegedly good and one allegedly "downright cruel").

Comments

[jwint]

Unless commentators provide identification and can be held responsible for their comments regarding the examiners, I think it would be best to avoid this site. Or at least take any comments with a grain of salt, understanding that the author need not take any responsibility for being correct or fair. I find it very difficult to accept that a professional such as an examiner can be so easily publicly criticised or slandered, without effective options for real defense!

[Donald Zuhn]

jwint:

I agree with your recommendation that an opinion from an unidentified poster at this site (or frankly, at any site) should be taken with a grain of salt. Obviously, practitioners who decide to use "USPTO Examiners" as a resource will also need to carefully consider the tone of each post (i.e., is the poster's comment substantive or merely inflammatory). However, I think it's impractical to expect a practitioner to identify him or herself because of the possibility of retribution.

In addition, I expect that many examiners will receive favorable reviews, and that if this site succeeds in developing a sufficient database, such comments would be as valuable as those that are critical. In fact, as I noted in my post, one of the two comments posted on the new site was positive.

Thanks for your comment,

Donald Zuhn

[Outsider]

One of two comments? If you click on "message board", there are actually many comments posted already.

I doubt that this site will be as useful as you hope. People tend to post only when an examiner is exceptionally good or exceptionally poor (especially the latter because they make people angry). May be the site will be useful for unmasking extremely poor examiners. That will be something at least.