The Patent and Trademark Office is a leader in financial management, but it is hampered by severe labor-management problems. Though the agency is serving as a model for others on measuring performance, PTO remains a bastion of labor-management tension and disdain.
Management plays all sorts of games.
They try to hide as much information as they possibly can to get tactical advantage. We don't have any confidence in them. Bruce Lehman, commissioner of patents and trademarks until the end of 1998, confirms the standoff. The poor relations between labor and management have consequences beyond minor disagreements over telecommuting arrangements and transit subsidies. The union also is trying to thwart an effort to turn the Patent and Trademark Office into a government corporation and is opposing efforts to make the patent examining procedure paperless.