By Eli Mazour ( September 27, 2018, 1:53 PM EDT) -- Almost a decade before Secretary of State Mike Pompeo embarked on a mission to bring "swagger" back to the U.S. State Department, David Kappos successfully brought it to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. During Kappos' time as director, the USPTO's ranking jumped from the 172nd spot to the first for employee morale in surveys, conducted by the Partnership for Public Survey, of different government agencies. The morale boost was largely due to Kappos empowering USPTO examiners to work with applicants to expedite prosecution of patent applications instead of engaging as adversaries. As a result, even as the number of patent application filings and the quality of examination increased, the backlog of patent applications decreased significantly....