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Report from the 2008 Patent & Trademark Depository Library Program Annual Meeting |
I am happy to report that the U.S. Patents and Trademarks office still stands and as of yet has not burned to the ground as the original U.S. patents office did in 1836. I can’t say that there weren’t moments during the conference when I wished that it had. I wasn’t feeling well and was having back pain for the duration of the conference trip, and since I was staying at a (significantly cheaper) hotel several miles from the conference venue, I had to do a lot of extra walking and ride the metro rail to the conference site and back to my hotel each day.
The following are some conference highlights. A pilot program for recruiting new examiners directly from college campuses has been started and interested PTDL representatives have been asked to volunteer. USPTO wants to repurpose PTDL librarians and PTDLs to be their recruiters and recruiting offices. They will expect the library to pick up the tab on this program. They believe they are providing a service to us by bringing more people into our libraries. Some of the representatives agreed, but I felt most of us were apprehensive about being given additional work and our libraries being given additional costs.
If implemented, this is how the program should run. USPTO will launch a media campaign aimed at college seniors in engineering and the sciences. The campaign will spotlight all the great benefits of working for the USPTO and instruct them to visit their local PTDL and ask the librarian about filing an application and setting up a teleconference for a live interview. The PTDL will provide the teleconference equipment and pick up any service fees associated with it and will most likely be responsible for scheduling the interviews. The USPTO pays nothing and siphons off graduates from our states in return. We were assured that for now this is just a pilot and they want to hear from everyone before they expand the program to all PTDLs.
Another notice given to PTDLs is that our CASSIS workstations are going to be “surplussed” which basically means that they will no longer be supported by USPTO. Once surplussed the PTDLs will be responsible for proving hardware and technical support for future PTDL needs. We were told that once the hardware is surplussed, we may do whatever we want with the workstations, including DVD tower, monitor, and printer – USPTO doesn’t want to pay shipping cost to recover them. We can choose to continue using the hardware, but USPTO will not provide technical assistance. Otherwise we can choose to use own workstations that are already supported by our IT departments.
These were perhaps the two most controversial and troubling aspects of all during the conference so I mention them first. The following are also of interest and/or importance.
John Doll, Commissioner for Patents, briefed us on patent statistics since last year, including electronic vs. paper filings, first actions, backlog, pendency rates, hires and attritions. He also summarized the strategic plan, successes and failures of new hiring and retention practices, “teleworking”, “worksharing”, and accelerated examination programs. All of this information is available for public inquiry both on the USPTO website and in file given to each PTDL representative.
There was an interesting session on old, unnumbered historical patents (patents issued before the 1836 fire were not numbered). Pola Jones and Linda Meier from the patent office discussed their ongoing projects to find and encode these largely still-missing patents into the patents database. 14 of these patents were discovered in a vault at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 2004 and have been scanned, assigned numbers and added to the USPTO database. Recently, in March 2007, a patent librarian in Maryland discovered over 500 more lost patents on a microfilm reel of unknown origin. These are currently being printed and scanned and added to the patents database.
Additionally, we learned why it is so important not to keep old forms or printouts from the USPTO publicly available within our libraries; those items are edited and updated so frequently that we may give out false information and be sued. Actually, the USPTO was sued, and lost, so now they are being extra vigilant about not having random old forms and handouts floating around in libraries. We are to direct patrons to the website where they can download and print all forms, which are always the most up-to-date and give no false information (presumably).
We learned quite a bit about the provisional patent and the very narrow benefits to using them. A provisional patent will really not be of any use to most applicants and just creates one more piece of paper that will get lost and give the applicant one more hefty fee to pay. We are not to encourage the use of the provisional patent. I wish that I could remember the specifics, but we will be receiving a DVD with all of the presentations from the conference soon and the information will be included there.
There was a very informative session about the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. The BPAI is the judicial body that reviews the adverse decisions of patent examiners upon request of an applicant whose application is rejected (Appeal), and conducts proceedings to determine between two patent applicants who is the “first-to-invent” (Interference). The BPAI does not reside over lawsuits filed by one granted patent owner over another granted patent owner. Those cases are handled in the regular court system.
There was a wonderful presentation given by David Dickerson from the European Patent Office about Esp@cenet, a patents database that blows the USPTO offerings out of the water. His presentation left me wondering why anyone uses the USPTO online database at all. Esp@cenet offers far more coverage, including more full-text US patents than the USPTO has to offer. It has more functionality that the USPTO database, such as printing entire patents with one click instead of printing one page at a time. You can export batches of data for analyzing on your desktop – something USPTO doesn’t offer, nor do they plan to offer it in the future. And, the European patent office provides free research and analysis tools.
The PTDLA membership meeting on Wednesday was mostly business as usual, with the biggest concern being the role of regional representatives to the PTDLA. There has been talk of phasing them out, as most of us agree there is no need for them anymore. Pre-internet they served the very important purpose of facilitating communication between PTDLs in their regions and the board of directors, but now that all members can directly communicate with each other over email there is no need to have them. The bylaws committee is taking formal proposals and will decide on the outcome and change the bylaws to reflect that.
The headlining event of the week was the National Trademark Expo held at the USPTO. This was a three-day event that profiled dozens of American trademarks, giving history, evolution of marks, and lots of educational materials on the value and importance of marks. Present at the expo were the Pillsbury Dough Boy, the M&M candy guys, a giant walking Hershey’s Kiss and Hershey Bar, the soldier from the popular video game Halo, and several other recognizable (and trademarked) characters. I didn’t get any good photos of my own, but at this link is a slideshow from the USPTO website: http://www.uspto.gov/main/homepagenews/2008apr15tmexpo_js.htm
There were plenty of other informational and training sessions, but what I’ve covered here were the most important, in my opinion. I have handouts and I will receive a DVD with all the presentations included from the PTDLP office, should anyone desire more information on the topics I mentioned above.
Return to the Fogler Library Patent and Trademark Depository Library homepage.
For more information, contact:
Martin Wallace
Science and Engineering Center
Patent and Trademark Depository
Raymond H. Fogler Library
Orono, Maine 04469-5729
Phone: 207-581-1678
Last Updated by: Martin Wallace: 04/22/2008
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