USPTO to Open Midwest Office

February 28, 2011

The USPTO plans to open a satellite office in Detroit, Michigan sometime in 2011. Jeremy Kriegel wrote two articles identifying several advantages of having this branch patent office in the Midwest.

Jeremy’s “All Aboard For Post-Grant Patent Review In Detroit” was featured in both the Intellectual Property and Midwest sections of the February 23rd installment of Law360, a national newswire for business lawyers. In this piece, he predicts the branch office’s proximity to Chicago will enable more frequent in-person interviews with examiners, potentially accelerating the grant of patents. He adds, “But if high-speed rail, the USPTO’s plans to launch the satellite office in Detroit, and the Patent Reform Bill of 2011 come to fruition,” productive one-day roundtrip train rides from Chicago to Detroit to argue at post-grant review hearings could be just around the corner. Jeremy also explains nuances of fast-paced post-grant review procedures outlined in the Patent Reform Bill and how patentees may make the most of procedural opportunities to gain potentially important advantages in cases pending before the Bill’s new Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

In an article appearing on Corp! magazine’s website titled “Five Benefits for Midwest Businesses from a Satellite US Patent Office,” he explains the USPTO is "leveraging the Midwest’s high concentration of scientists, engineers, leading research universities and registered patent practitioners" as a way to quell the backlog of over 700,000 patent applications pending at the patent office in Virginia.

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