Office of Patent Quality Assurance

The Office of Patent Quality Assurance (OPQA) continuously leverages assessments from multiple sources to gauge patent quality, target areas for improvement, and achieve impeccable work products for the benefit of the entire patent community. OPQA assesses and analyzes quality at the USPTO by reviewing work products for statutory compliance, clarity, and best practices; defining and standardizing quality metrics; and providing feedback to Technology Centers.

Under the direction of the Commissioner for Patents Charles Kim, OPQA reviews the work products of patent examiners. OPQA’s 60-plus Review Quality Assurance Specialists (RQASes) are primary examiners with a proven history of high-quality patent examination. Organized by technical disciplines, RQASes are very familiar with the technology being reviewed, much like examiners are in the Technology Centers for examination of patent applications. In addition to RQASes, OPQA has Supervisory Review Quality Assurance Specialists (SRQAS) for each discipline (often referred to as Quality Leads), and administrative and program support staff to facilitate and accomplish OPQA objectives.

OPQA audits a random sample (approximately 12,000 Office actions) of examination work products each fiscal year. The random sample is reviewed based on the statutory compliance standards. In addition to determining statutory compliance, RQASes provide feedback that enhances quality and increases individual efficiency. The granularity of data obtained by reviewing work product for statutory compliance provides meaningful feedback to Technology Center management and quality assurance specialists. It also facilitates the identification of quality trends and training opportunities and the evaluation of recent training at the corps level and below. USPTO statisticians perform trend analysis on statutory compliance and clarity assessments to identify quality trends, along with the underlying causes, to reduce rework and promote efficiency.

In addition to statutory compliance reviews on a random sample of work products, OPQA also completes other reviews to meet various Agency objectives. Examples of work product reviewed include:

• Work of newly hired examiners at the Patent Training Academy to assess the effectiveness of a training class
• Work product with respect to case studies to identify areas for improvement
• Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Written Opinions, to ensure contractors are producing high-quality work for the USPTO and to answer inquiries through case studies

In collaboration with the USPTO's Chief Statistician’s Office, OPQA also administers internal and external stakeholder quality perception surveys as tools to assess the perception of the quality of patent examination. Results from such surveys are compared to statutory compliance statistics to ensure the perception of our quality is aligned with our metrics. 

The USPTO has had quality metrics based on independent reviews of Office actions since at least 1983.  While initial reviews focused solely on allowances, OPQA’s random reviews presently focus on non-final, final, and allowance Office actions to provide a more thorough understanding of the quality of work product and processes. 

Email inquiries

About the OPQA: OPQA@uspto.gov
Quality metrics: QualityMetrics@uspto.gov 
Patent quality: PatentQuality@uspto.gov

For resources related to patent legal administration (for example, USPTO Federal Register Notices, Patent Laws and Rules, MPEP, and all USPTO patent examination training materials), go to Patent Legal Administration.