"Thank you Secretary Locke for your support, for joining today and for your focus on the USPTO and the American IP system.
I also want to thank President Obama for appointing me to this position.
And thanks to all of you who came out today during your lunch hour to participate in this event. What a wonderful welcome!
I also want to thank the senior management team at the USPTO, particularly for their leadership during a time of great challenges for the agency. And I especially thank John Doll for his service leading the agency for the latest 7 months.
Thanks, also, to the former directors who are here today. I look forward to working with you in my new capacity.
Finally, I want to thank my wife, Leslie, and friends joining today for their support and encouragement. I’m very thankful you could be here. I am tremendously pleased and honored to be joining your team at the USPTO.
As a longtime patent practitioner and trademark advisor, I understand both the importance and the difficulty of the work done by USPTO employees.
I have some understanding—and will be learning a lot more in the coming months—about the challenges, and indeed the impediments, you face in doing your jobs.
My pledge to you is that I will listen, and I will work with every single USPTO employee as part of your team to understand these issues and address them so that you can reach your maximum effectiveness and achieve everything you want in your careers.
For example, I know many of you have concerns about the count system. We’re going to address the count system.
I know many of you who telework or want to telework have concerns about travel requirements We’re going to address that issue. This is a Trademarks issue; it is a Patents issue; it’s an agency issue.
I know many of you are concerned about the time your managers are able to spend helping you learn the refinements of the patent laws and guiding you in applying 35USC, 37CFR and the MPEP in your work. We’re going to address those issues too.
I also recognize that Trademarks has very different challenges from Patents as Trademarks seeks to maintain its low pendency and high quality while retaining its highly skilled employees in a time when application filings have been decreasing.
The list goes on and on, as you all know better than I do. I’m here to address the whole list.
Let me reiterate—I’m HERE to address YOUR issues.
Secretary Locke has asked me to devote my personal attention to improving—and indeed remaking in some areas—the operations of the USPTO so that you can succeed at doing high-quality work, so that - in turn - we can succeed at serving the best interests of our country.
This will include reducing the backlog of unexamined patent applications, cutting pendency dramatically, working off the mounting appeals backlog and improving re-exam processing—all while maintaining high quality standards."

To read all check out : http://www.uspto.gov/main/homepagenews/2009aug13.htm