USPTO Performance and Accountability Report - U.S. Patent and ...

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MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
Improving Enforcement and Providing
Capacity Building and Technical Assistance
to Key Countries/Regions
A key challenge with overseas IP enforcement is the
need to increase awareness, skills, and resources of
foreign enforcement officials. To improve enforcement
in high-priority countries and regions, the
USPTO has developed rigorous capacity-building
programs for foreign enforcement officials, including
police and investigators, prosecutors, border
enforcement officials, as well as the judiciary.
The USPTO has taken an active role in working with
foreign judiciaries and prosecutors to increase their
understanding of IP issues through direct training
and exchanges with U.S. officials, including U.S.
judges and prosecutors who are experts in handling
IP cases. The USPTO’s IP enforcement programs are
also designed to address overarching rule-of-law as
well as court administration concerns in foreign
countries, by encouraging an environment of better
consistency and predictability for IP litigants, which
may have the added benefit of lowering litigation
costs resulting from more efficient adjudication
processes.
The USPTO and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit (CAFC) held a joint program in Beijing, China
on IP adjudication with the Supreme People’s Court
of China. This brought together over 1,500 participants
from a number of different countries and
featured remarks by Chief Judge Rader and all of
the judges from the CAFC, USPTO Director David
Kappos, and many other Chinese and U.S. officials.
The Beijing conference was followed by visits by the
CAFC judges to Guangzhou and Shanghai, where
they met with local judges and IP officials.
The USPTO also partnered with the CAFC as well as
the Federal Judicial Center to host approximately 50
U.S. Federal judges from throughout the country for
a program on the Patent Application Examination
Process, Patent Reexamination, and Post-Grant
Proceedings. The participants were part of the
recently launched Patent Pilot Project, designed to
strengthen patent law expertise among judges.
PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY REPORT: FISCAL YEAR 2012
Combating the proliferation of counterfeit medicines
is a training priority. The USPTO organized a series of
workshops in Indonesia and Jordan. The U.S. Food
and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Justice,
and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
Homeland Security Investigations participated in
the workshops.
The USPTO convened four roundtables (three in
China and one in the U.S.) with U.S. industry representatives
and published a Federal Register notice
to solicit input on their experiences enforcing patents
in China. The input received has been compiled
into a report, which was published on the USPTO’s
website. The report will help guide the USPTO’s
engagement with China on patent enforcement.
The GIPA offers training programs on protection, utilization,
and enforcement of IP rights including
patents, trademarks, and copyrights. As demonstrated
in Table 16, it is through the GIPA training
programs that the USPTO is instrumental in achieving
its objectives of advancing IP policies. Note that the
FY 2012 results did not exceed the anticipated
target. This was largely due to the emergent nature
of the supporting goal itself. The baseline was established
in 2011 based on the launch of GIPA’s threepart
survey methodology. A target was selected
from a sampling of capacity building programs.
The sampling for FY 2012 programs included two
WIPO workshops that included students, but not
foreign government officials. This somewhat skewed
the evaluative efficacy of survey responses regarding
the impact of the programs on the participants’
work. Another program using the survey process
was on a very narrow topic, which may also have
caused an outlier effect on the results. To improve
on both the methodology and enhance the value
of the supporting performance metric, GIPA intends
to apply the lessons learned from this initial round
into the next fiscal year and apply the surveys to a
larger pool of more diverse programs.
TABLE 16 Supporting Measure: Percentage of foreign
officials trained who have initiated or implemented
a positive change in the IP systems in their organizations
and/or countries
FISCAL YEAR TARGET ACTUAL
2011 Baseline 79%
2012 75% 69%