If you are a Hindu Indian American like me, please DO NOT join the United States Patent & Trademark Office, because you will face religious discrimination!
I have been a Primary Examiner in the 2800 Tech Center at the United States Patent and Trademark Office for more than 12 years. There are hundreds of of Indian American Patent Examiners in Tech Center 2800 and most of them are Hindu and NONE of them will ever be promoted to Director, see the picture below, see the names of the TC 2800 directors, see that there are four directors and two are from India and neither of them is Hindu, in fact they are both named Thomas, do you think this is a coincidence ? The fact is that USPTO Human Resources selects candidates for promotion based on Religion and the religious discrimination is so bad that Joe Biden had to appoint a Hindu Vaishali Udupa as Director of Patents, but do not be fooled, Vaishali was appointed, she was not promoted, and Hindus at the USPTO have a glass ceiling. Right now there are two Thomases from India as Director. Soon will all the Thomases from India will be promoted to Director and will the signature below read Thomas, Thomas, Thomas and Thomas ? I request President Joe Biden to end the glass ceiling for Hindus at the United States Patent and Trademark Office!
I have been a Primary Examiner in the 2800 Tech Center at the United States Patent and Trademark Office for more than 12 years. This page is about the racism and religious discrimination I face on a daily basis at the USPTO. For example the USPTO is using a computer “routing” program to harass Hindus by dumping the time consuming cases on them! Director Joseph Thomas from India (who is not Hindu) dumped a dozen Continuation-in-part cases with 70 parents on me and told me in a Teams meeting that he has the right to harass me because he is using a computer program to harass me, and then my supervisor Britt Hanley told me he would fire me if I didn’t stop talking about it on this website, read more below.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management at opmdatabreach.com is refusing to reimburse Hindu employees for losses due to the OPM data breach , it happened to me ! That is just racist and it is disgusting that the U.S. Government treats Hindu Indian American Employees like this !
I sent a letter to my Senator John Cornyn complaining about the religious discrimination faced by Indian Americans at the United States Patent and Trademark Office but he did not even bother to respond to me!
Promotion discrimination:
I applied for promotion to the OPQA i.e. Office of Patent Quality Assurance. The HR representative told me that my resume was not forwarded to the Director of OPQA. So I filed an EEO complaint and it turns out that the resumes of many people with only a Bachelors degree were sent to the Director but even though I have a PhD I was not considered. Jessica Hughes, the Equal Employment Oppotunity Officer told me plainly that an Hindu Indian American Primary Examiner with a PhD is less qualified than any other Examiner without a PhD. At the OPQA there are two white PhDs at the top of the organization, but their PhD has value because they are white, if you are not white then your PhD degree has no value at the USPTO. I complained to Bismarck Myrick who is the African American head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Department at the USPTO that the EEOD is a sham organization but Bismarck made it clear to me that he doesn’t care about religious discrimination and that Hindu Indian Americans have no promotion prospects in the USPTO.
Promotion discrimination:
Joseph Thomas is from India and he is a director in 2800 Tech Center and he is not Hindu and I have faced discrimination from Joseph. For example:
- when I did primary certification, after I did the required 6 months of doing 115% production, Joseph Thomas gave me a week less than normal to prepare my primary defense because he had to go to a vacation resort in Kerala, India. You may not think this is a big deal but about 30% of Examiners fail primary certification, so if you have less time to prepare, then it reduces your chances of passing, in which case you have to wait a year and then do another 6 months of doing 115% production, and then defend that ! I know 3 Examiners from my batch of new hires who did not make primary the first time !
- in spite of the shortened preparation time, I successfully defended my office actions and showed the cited objections to be wrong, so I passed and became primary and then Joseph intentionally sent my primary certificate to the wrong address and refused to send me a replacement certificate, which is not nice! Luckily, POPA and the Deputy Commissioner’s office helped me by sending me a replacement primary certificate !
- I was assigned catheter cases. Yes, you read it correctly, after ten years of examining semiconductors, I was assigned cases about examining catheters i.e. tubes through which you urinate! My supervisor Steven Loke at that time and I had to work for several days to remove the catheter cases from my docket.
- I was assigned extremely tough CIP cases with 70 parents each and after I did more than a dozen of them in 3 years, it became clear that this Applicant’s cases were dumped on me intentionally once the number of parents became too large, and everyone was laughing that the Hindu person is getting the tough cases. Because I am Hindu, not one person in POPA or the Office of Inspector General or anyone in the management chain would listen. My supervisor Britt Hanley said I would get no additional time, so I complained to Senator John Cornyn of Texas (my home state) and then to Commissioner of Patents Vaishali Udupa. In my email below see all the things that Joseph Thomas told me which were disgusting to hear! Luckily Vaishali Udupa was able to help me but I feel certain that the USPTO management will find some way to dump more shit on me!
PATH group lunch:
I am on TEAPP meaning that I work from home. The USPTO wanted us all to meet out team members in person occasionally, so the USPTO organized a program called PATH where about a dozen art units at a time came to Washington DC to meet team members face to face. It is a two day event and on the first day the art unit were given 2 hours to go out to lunch together. Most of the art units went to lunch at a nice restaurant, but in my art unit for some strange reason, we all ate catered potbelly sandwiches in an empty classroom. Since I am TEAPP, I had to spend over $900 on hotel and Uber and airfare to Washington DC for 2 days to attend PATH and so the potbelly lunch felt odd. Then I heard that there actually was a team lunch but it was held a few days after PATH was over, so the TEAPP Examiners had already left Washington, DC by then, and it felt like discrimination against the Examiners who did not live in Washington, DC !
SEE trips:
The USPTO has about 10,000 Examiners. Every year about a hundred or so are selected to go on SEE trips, so for about 4 days they fly to California or somewhere, stay in a hotel and visit a few companies and everything is paid for by the USPTO. But my question is, what about all the other Examiners who were not selected, what do they get ? I wish the USPTO would instead spend the SEE money to give all the Examiners a nice gift that is job related like popular textbooks, the SEE trips just seem like discrimination !