Staff Reports
The Government Accountability Office just dropped a reality check on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A new GAO audit warns that the USPTO’s push to shrink its patent backlog might leave the agency short of its goal well into 2031 unless it fixes a rising tide of examiner departures and the policies that caused them. That is a big deal for inventors, investors, and anyone who cares whether U.S. patents mean anything.
GAO report: USPTO backlog could persist through 2031
The GAO report shows the unexamined patent application inventory climbed to about 838,000 in January 2025 and fell only to roughly 756,000 by August 2026. The agency’s stated target is 599,000, but GAO modeling says the USPTO won’t hit that mark before 2031 unless attrition falls. In plain English: cutting corners on staff and training to chase a headline number won’t win the day. It might win a short-term press release, but the long-term cost could be lower patent quality and slower, messier outcomes for innovators.
Why patent examiner attrition matters
Attrition has climbed from 2.9% in fiscal 2020 to 7.6% in fiscal 2025 — the 12-month rate stayed at 7.6% as of August 2026. The numbers are telling: the USPTO hired about 1,054 examiners between August 2025 and June 2026, yet 1,209 left between February 2025 and June 2026. New hiring isn’t keeping pace with exits. Meanwhile, productivity demands have increased, annual subject-matter training hours were eliminated, and initial onboarding was slashed from 16 weeks down to eight (later said to be ten). That’s a fast track to burnout and a slow-motion collapse of expertise. If your experts don’t have time to learn, the “expert” part becomes questionable.
AI tools and the rush for throughput risk patent quality
The USPTO has leaned on AI tools and new productivity rules to move faster. Trouble is, GAO found those AI tools aren’t reliable yet — the Similarity Search tool sometimes gives incomplete or irrelevant results, forcing full manual searches. Examiners report unpaid overtime and less time to analyze prior art. The agency even paused or scaled back quality surveys and resisted giving GAO requested information. That combination — unproven tech, fewer training hours, and less quality oversight — reads like a strategy to chase numbers at the expense of durable patent quality.
What Director John A. Squires must do next
GAO recommended that Under Secretary and Director John A. Squires assess and address the risks the current backlog-reduction strategy poses to examiner retention and examination quality. He should take that seriously. Restore meaningful training, fix unrealistic productivity rules, publish quality metrics again, and demand real performance data from AI pilots before relying on them. The USPTO can and should reduce backlogs, but not by hollowing out the workforce or letting the stamp of “patent granted” mean less than it used to. Inventors deserve timely decisions. The market deserves reliable patents. Americans deserve an agency that treats quality as more than a PR talking point.
