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United States Patent and Trademark Office Performance and Accountability Report Fiscal Year 2003 Management Discussion and Analysis |
BUDGETARY RESOURCES AND REQUIREMENTSFor FY 2003, budgetary resources available for spending totaled $1,193.0 million, a 4.0 percent increase over the FY 2002 total of $1,146.7 million. Financially, the USPTO is a self-sufficient Federal Government agency that funds the cost of its operations from user fees rather than appropriations from taxes paid into the general fund of the Treasury. As a Government agency, the USPTOs goal is to balance budgetary resources provided through the collection of user fees with budgetary spending incurred to fill customer orders, rather than generating net income. Major fees are set by statute and activity-based cost accounting techniques assist in approximating fee amounts necessary to recover the cost of non-statutory fees. The USPTO is refining these cost accounting techniques continually and furthering its fee analyses to improve its assessment of fee requirements. The below chart illustrates the declining growth in the budgetary resources available for spending at the USPTO.
Temporarily unavailable fee collections occur when the Congress does not allow the USPTO to spend all fees collected during a given fiscal year. In FY 2003, the USPTO was appropriated $166.8 million from fees collected in fiscal years 2001 and 2002. The USPTO was also appropriated $1,015.2 million for fees collected during FY 2003. During FY 2003, the USPTO collected an additional $178.5 million that was not available for spending. It is uncertain when the remaining $341.0 million from fees will be appropriated to the USPTO. The below chart illustrates amounts that Congress has appropriated to the USPTO over the past four fiscal years.
The following charts show the resources required to meet financial responsibilities compared to the resources available. Unfunded liabilities related to earned fee collections, as well as a liability for work to be performed on unearned fee collections are measures of the commitment to vendors and customers for services and orders that the USPTO has received and taken through FY 2003. |
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