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Tuesday Jun 30, 2015

Update on our Regional Offices

Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee

It’s an exciting time for our four regional offices as we are reaching entrepreneurs across the country, hiring new patent examiners and judges, and getting ready to open our permanent office space in Dallas and Silicon Valley later this year. In addition, June 30 marks the one-year anniversary of our Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Denver and July 12th marks the three-year anniversary of the Elijah J. McCoy Regional Office in Detroit.

We’re increasingly excited to cut the ribbon at the permanent space for our Texas Regional Office in Dallas later this year. We’ll be located in the Terminal Annex Federal Building, a prime location in Downtown Dallas. We’re currently reviewing applications for a Regional Director for the Dallas office, who will be responsible for general oversight of the office as the most senior ranking official representing the USPTO. Later this summer, we will be advertising for patent examiner positions in Dallas. These will be posted on www.usajobs.gov, so please help spread the word.

We continue to participate in high profile events such as Dallas’s first Startup Weekend Women's Edition, at which several of our top USPTO leaders spoke in late May. On July 12, Deputy Director Russell Slifer will open the second annual National Summer Teacher Institute on Innovation, STEM, and Intellectual Property at the University of Texas in Dallas. This multi-day professional development training opportunity is designed to help middle and high school teachers incorporate concepts of making, inventing, and intellectual property creation and protection into classroom instruction. On August 7-8, the USPTO, the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, and Southern Methodist University (SMU) are sponsoring the Dallas Entrepreneur Conference, which will be held at SMU’s Dedman School of Law in Dallas.  The event will provide resources to help entrepreneurs protect their intellectual property and grow their businesses.

With the West Coast Regional Office in Silicon Valley opening later this year in San Jose, hiring for the office is a key priority. In March, the office held a livestreamed recruitment webinar in cooperation with the office of U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren, where a panel of USPTO patent examiners discussed their careers, sharing their personal experiences and taking questions from prospective candidates. As a follow up, we recently held a series of recruitment events across the region to search for top talent. We are seeking patent examiners in the fields of electrical engineering, computer engineering, and mechanical engineering, and are also hiring PTAB judges for all of our regional offices. You can learn more about the role of an administrative patent judge by watching our video series.

Over the last few months, the Silicon Valley office has been active in outreach efforts with organizations including the San Francisco Economic Development Council, Maker Faire Bay Area, Licensing Executives Society, and IP law associations across the region. The office is actively engaging with startups and incubators, providing technology focused and industry specific workshops and presentations. Further, in June, the office worked with the USPTO’s IP Attaché program to hold outreach meetings in San Diego and Los Angeles. The purpose of these meetings was to hear directly from stakeholders about their international IP-related concerns and challenges, and how the IP Attaché Program can help. Read more in a recent post to this blog.

It has been a busy year since the Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Denver opened in June 2014, a one-stop shop for innovators in the region. It is currently operating with 80 patent examiners and eleven Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) judges. Under the direction of interim Regional Director Robin Evans, the Denver office has been working with important industries in the region such as clean tech and biotech and organizations such as the Denver Mini-Maker Fair, Rocky Mountain IP Institute, and SXSW V2V. On April 2, the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation awarded its Metropolitan Cooperation Award to individuals whose collective work resulted in the selection of Denver as a USPTO office location, and Deputy Director Russell Slifer and Senator Bennett accepted the award, demonstrating the office’s strong connection with the community.

The Rocky Mountain office also helped spearhead the recent expansion of the USPTO’s Patent Pro Bono program to Colorado, in conjunction with the Colorado Bar Association Intellectual Property Section and the Mi Casa Resource Center. The Colorado Pro Bono Patent Initiative, or the ProBoPat program, seeks to connect low income Colorado inventors with Colorado patent professionals for patent preparation and prosecution legal services on a pro bono or significantly reduced-fee basis.

In April, I had the chance to visit the Elijah J. McCoy Regional Office in Detroit, Michigan, our first regional office. We are operating with ten PTAB judges and more than 120 patent examiners. I enjoyed speaking to entrepreneurs and startups throughout my trip, including at the Detroit Techweek LAUNCH competition and entrepreneurship summit. Christal Sheppard, the Regional Director of the Detroit office, joined me for a roundtable on patent innovation with Senator Gary Peters, Congressman John Conyers, and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, where we discussed intellectual property issues impacting the region and how we can work together to promote economic growth. The Detroit office continues to actively engage with the innovation community, as well as hold Saturday seminars, which are free events open to the public.

I look forward to updating you again in a few months about more exciting developments with our regional offices, including the grand openings of our permanent offices in Dallas and Silicon Valley. USPTO regional offices help protect American innovation and competitiveness, and we are dedicated to providing services to entrepreneurs, inventors, and small businesses, while actively engaging communities and local industries.

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