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from the fighting-against-the-tide-is-tiring dept.
TechDirt reports
[...] The past few USPTO directors had been cut from the "more patents is always a good thing" mold, whereas Lee actually recognized that bad patents harmed innovation. And even though the last time the Patent Office got concerned about bad patents it allowed the patent approval backlog to fill up, under Lee the backlog has reached its lowest point in a decade.[paywall]
[...] For all the craziness going on in the government right now, having competent leadership at the USPTO would be one less thing to worry about. But... now it's being reported that Lee has suddenly resigned and sent a goodbye email to staff. That's bad news on the patent front.
Of course, it may be ages before any new director is appointed. As I type this, of the 559 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, Trump hasn't even named a nominee for 431 of them. [...] Adding the new USPTO director to that pile may mean no new USPTO director for.... who the hell knows how long.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:00PM (3 children)
Trump's only been in office for less than 5 months now, and I'm not talking about him doing "lasting damage", as in helping pass some horrible law or starting a war or something, I'm talking about his administration not actually performing the duties that the Executive branch of the government is supposed to do, because of lack of staffing. With 431 key positions not even having a nominee (according to TFS), that's just the tip of the iceberg with lack of staffing as it doesn't count the vast number of lower-level positions that are likely going unfilled because so many people refuse to work in his administration. There's been many reports of how understaffed the State Department is these days. There's a lot of functions that the federal government of a nation this size has to perform and if they don't get done, there's going to be major problems somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:12PM
431 unfilled positions? Sounds like the conservative ideal of small government! Don't bother trying to get rid of the departments /officially/, just don't fill the positions! No patents? No problem, let the free market reign! No regulation, lower taxes, MAGA!
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:35PM
These aren't Jefferson's days. With a $40billion budget, I'm sure the state department can manage moving the workload to lower rank staffers.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:39PM
I went and looked through the list provided by ourpublicservice.org. Trump is probably up there with the most Marxist president we have ever had. He seems to be keeping the functional people around but not appointing any management positions. I went through and looked up some of the positions on wiki and a lot have an acting chair/whatever maintaining the position. I am unsure how these folks get chosen to be the acting position or by what means they found themselves in that role, but I presume this is a less political process than the appointed top dog.
There are a lot of ambassadors not yet appointed, I am uncertain (and do not have the time currently, break almost over) to go look at who is doing these roles as acting ambassador but it is a highly political position. What I take from all of this is that we have very little change in how things are run from Obama with the exception of the person giving orders presumably supported by the previous president not being there.
I am rather interested in seeing how this plays out.
Is there a constitutional mandate that any of these 431 positions be filled? How many of these are fluff political positions invented to make a friend/supporter some money? No doubt there are some in here that should be filled (no disagreement there), but I think the main opposition these not being filled would be by Dems who don't want a Rep shill and by Libertarians wanting less government.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam