Director's Blog: the latest from USPTO leadership

Expanding our Communications and Public Engagement

Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos

As the end of the year approaches, I’d like to reflect on our accomplishments in the areas of communications and outreach.  I am particularly proud of the work we have done to inform the public and engage our stakeholders in a proactive and transparent communications effort.  

This year we greatly expanded opportunities to inform the public and to seek input from our stakeholders:

• Building on the success of the weekly Director’s Forum blog, we expanded our use of social media channels in 2010. By using popular social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter we are able to share information with a much wider audience.  Our website will always be the news source of record for the USPTO, but Facebook and Twitter allow us to engage and interact with the public in new ways and to reach a broader audience.  
• Our Data Visualization Center, or “dashboard,” allows our stakeholders to monitor our progress each month in a number of key performance metrics such as patent pendency and our backlog. When we’re reaching our goals—and when we’re not—our stakeholders will be able to track our progress on a monthly basis as this data is updated regularly and accompanied by a guest blog from Commissioner Stoll to add context. Look for additional metrics from Trademarks and other business areas to be added in the coming months.
• This year we also launched “Inventors Eye”—a bi-monthly newsletter for the independent inventor community.  Each issue covers topics of interest to independent inventors; and stories about people who have become successful inventors. It also includes tips on working with the USPTO; information on events, organizations and meetings of interest to the inventor community.
• We also launched the Feedback Channel—where the public can comment on various USPTO initiatives including the Green Tech pilot program, Project Exchange and others. 
• Today, I’m excited to announce the establishment of the USPTO Subscription Center at www.uspto.gov/subscribe. This one-stop online hub enables the public to sign up to receive one or more “subscriptions” via email, including press releases, Director's Forum blog posts, new issues of "Inventor's Eye," a new monthly recap of recent USPTO activities, and patent and trademark alerts. We think this provides a convenient way for people to stay current with the latest information from the USPTO. I hope anyone who follows what we do here will take the opportunity to sign up.

I hope you will take advantage of these resources to stay informed of the latest news from the USPTO.  If you have suggestions on how we can continue to improve our communications, we would welcome your comments.  

Thanks, as always, for your feedback. And happy holidays.

Posted at 10:36AM Dec 20, 2010 in USPTO  |  Comments[2]