Satellite Patent Office Set To Open In North Texas
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The federal government is opening patent offices outside of the Washington D.C. area and one of the new satellite locations will be in North Texas.
David Kappos, the Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, says this is the first time in two centuries that the government has made such a move.
Kappos said Dallas/Fort Worth is "ideal" and the office location should encourage more businesses to create jobs by making patents more accessible.
"It's a strong community for veterans, patent attorney's, and entrepreneurs," Kappos explained. "It will bring new inventions to the marketplace faster and more efficiently, in turn allowing them to create new jobs and new opportunity."
Ultimately, Kappos said building a location in North Texas will be a catalyst in boosting the economy.
"More than a quarter of the patents granted in 2010, in the Dallas region, were awarded to small businesses," he said. "So, the establishment of a satellite office in this area will empower those businesses to continue creating jobs."
Along with local businesses creating jobs, Kappos says they anticipate hiring as many as 100 people for the new Patent and Trademark Office.
Currently there is only one patent office in the United States; it's located in Alexandria, Virginia. The location is overloaded and said to have a backlog of three years. The satellite offices are meant to help with those issues.
"We are also making significant strides in reducing the patent backlog, reducing wait times for applicants, and increasing the quality of the entire patenting process," Kappos said.
The first patent satellite office is set to open on July 13 in Detroit, Michigan.
The North Texas satellite location is scheduled to open by 2014.
The other cities getting satellite patent offices are in Denver and the Silicon Valley.
The new patent office will employ as many as 100 people and the theory is that the establishment of a satellite office in this area should encourage more businesses to create jobs by making patents more accessible. Undersecretary David Kappos says they chose Dallas for a reason:
"It's a strong community for veterans, patent attorney's, and entrepreneurs, make it an ideal location."
Kappos says the first satellite patent office was opened in Detroit; other cities to get a patent office are Denver and Silicon Valley. The office should open here in 2014.
Until now, the country has had only one patent office, located in Alexandria, Va. It is so swamped that it has a backlog of three years.
Last year, Congress passed the America Invents Act, which called for new satellite patent offices to be opened nationwide. The legislation named Detroit as one location, but asked other cities to submit bids.
