There actually was an unofficial policy of "reject everything" instituted by the Director of the PTO during the Bush era in a misguided attempt to bolster quality. What happened was not that people stopped applying, but the patent backlog grew huge. Sure, some gave up, but by and large most kept trying.
Maintenance fees are quite a bit higher, but they are bounded (only 3 times over the life of a patent). Also, they are not guaranteed, because often a patentee finds out that the patent is not worth much due to the vagaries of the market and abandons it. However, it would be interesting to model this as a maximization problem given enough statistics about the probabilities of applying, continuing prosecution and abandonment...
In any case, this is all academic because the PTO gets to keep only flat amount of the money it brings in. Everything extra goes back to the Fed. Money is really not an incentive for the PTO.
Maintenance fees are quite a bit higher, but they are bounded (only 3 times over the life of a patent). Also, they are not guaranteed, because often a patentee finds out that the patent is not worth much due to the vagaries of the market and abandons it. However, it would be interesting to model this as a maximization problem given enough statistics about the probabilities of applying, continuing prosecution and abandonment...
In any case, this is all academic because the PTO gets to keep only flat amount of the money it brings in. Everything extra goes back to the Fed. Money is really not an incentive for the PTO.