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| | Mon May 19, 2008 8:13 pm |
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The PTO is committed to hiring around 1200 new patent examiners per year for the next several years (at least). Currently, weekly interviews are being held at PTO headquarters in Alexandria, VA for interested applicants. General starting salary for qualified candidates is $64,000/yr (GS-7, Step-10) plus a recruitment bonus worth up to $39,000, depending upon college degree. As a patent examiner, you are eligible to work flexible hours of your choosing, part-time if you have a very young child and several years of service, and as a full-time employee of a certain GS level, you are also eligible to apply to "hotel", meaning you can work at home all but 1 hour per week. In addition, if you choose to attend law school (focusing on IP law), the PTO will pay for your tuition as well as a book allowance. In return for these benefits, you accept the responsibility of being accountable for high production quotas (in terms of applications processed) per bi-week, per fiscal quarter and per fiscal year. The high production quotas often require unpaid overtime work on weekends, evenings, etc. As a result of the demanding quotas of work required, turnover among patent examiners is quite high. However, the generous pay and flexibility of hours work to offset the sheer amount of work involved in the job. If anyone is interested in applying to become a patent examiner, I would be happy to answer your e-mails regarding any questions you may have about the job.
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| | Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:23 pm |
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National Trademark ExpoApril 10-12
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
600 Dulany Street
Alexandria , VA 22314
www.uspto.gov 571/272-8400 Themed displays, booths and costumed characters are used to showcase the value of protecting brand names, fighting counterfeit goods and the important role trademarks play in our economy. Participating companies include Burberrry, Callaway Golf Company, Caterpillar, Microsoft and NASCAR. Anson Wiliams, best known as "Potsie" on the TV series "Happy Days," brings his new line of make-up, Starmaker, to the expo. Free!
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| | Sat Nov 03, 2007 10:21 am |
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The Japanese Patent Office provides a computerized English translation of its patents that have been published from 1993 to present. To access the English translation, go HERE, click on "Number Search" in the upper right corner, enter the patent number you are searching for in the format of YY-XXXXXX or YYYY-XXXXXX, select your patent, then on the Abstracts page click on the "Detail" link at the top - this is the English translation. Because this is a just a computer translation, it is not exactly 100% reliable. Often, it is difficult to read or understand exactly what is being said, but you can get the general gist. Here's how I use the computer translation: Say I'm looking to see if this patent discloses a particular limitation, such as the method used to form the gate dielectric of a transistor - so I look at the translation and I find the paragraph(s) where they are talking about the gate dielectric, but it's not exactly clear from the garbled translation how the dielectric is formed; well, I write down the paragraph numbers where I think this information is and I take it to our Japanese translator on staff. Now, all I have to do is ask the translator to tell me what it says about the gate dielectric in this particular paragraph and I get the info I need immediately, instead of waiting, sometimes days, for the translator to translate the entire Japanese patent.
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| | Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:30 pm |
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October 31, 2007 - Today, in Alexandria, Virginia, Judge Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia granted a motion by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the PTO from implementing its new Claims and Continuations Final Rules that were to go into effect on November 1, 2007. The Claims and Continuations Final Rules, published in the Federal Register on August 21, 2007, sought to change several key practices in patent application examination. The "claims" portion of the Final Rules seeks to limit most patent applications to a maximum of 5 independent claims and 25 total claims. The "continuations" part of the Final Rules limits the amount of continuations filed in each patent application to two and the number of requests for continued examination to one, in the absence of a petition. GSK contends in its motion that the PTO lacks the authority to make such substantive patent rule changes. In response to the preliminary injunction, the USPTO has issued a notice on its website that PTO employees are to continue to processing and examining applications under the old rules until further notice.
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| | Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:11 am |
| | | Comments: 0 Views: 0 |
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