Seattle, WA

The Seattle PTRC and the University of Washington Libraries hosted the PTAB roadshow in May. The USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) AIA Trial Roundtable was one of a series of events held across the country to share information about new AIA (America Invents Acts) trials and to solicit feedback on the new rules and procedures. Presentations and panel discussions were made by USPTO personnel, including administrative patent judges, and local practitioners. There were approximately 50 attendees, including attorneys and other patent professionals from the local legal community and corporations, UW affiliates from the Center for Commercialization and the School of Law, and independent inventors. I handled local logistics, provided onsite technical assistance and offered introductory comments. I enjoyed meeting and working with the USPTO personnel.

I was able to setup a new dedicated workstation for access to PubEAST and PubWEST. I worked with Libraries Information Technology Services to configure a workstation outside our normal public workstation deployment system. I can load software and provide access via the USPTO VPN.

My annual guest lecture on patents & trademarks for the UW Information School Government Publications class is a highlight of my year. The students always show interest and ask great questions. Some of the students are in the law librarianship program, so I enjoy their perspective on intellectual property information services.

In other news: we at the UW Libraries continue to adapt to our new shared integrated library system (Ex Libris) with the Orbis Cascade Alliance, while maintaining access to our catalog via 2 interfaces: UW Libraries Search-Beta (Primo) and UW WorldCat. Development on the shared system is ongoing.

Finally, we lost a librarian position here in the Engineering Library. The fund line went with the librarian to a new “First Year Experience” position in the undergraduate library. It was a half-time librarian, but it does make a difference to our reference and research services.