David Kappos was sworn in August 13, 2009 as the new Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Mr. Kappos intends to focus on reducing the backlog of pending patent applications and appeals at the USPTO, as well as reviewing the count system currently in place for evaluating the performance of Examiners, among other things.  Mr. Kappos has previous experience as an engineer and an intellectual property attorney with IBM.  Many commentators speculate that Mr. Kappos will conduct a review of the Patent Office’s proposed rules being challenged in Tafas v. Doll and possibly alter the Patent Office’s course.  It will be interesting to see if and how the Patent Office’s position changes with respect to the proposed rules.