Akron, OH

The Akron Summit County Public Library has been a PTRC since 1995. The patent information is located in the Science and Technology Division of the Main Library. It has been a busy year here at the Akron PTRC. The biggest news from last year was that we embraced the Maker Movement by hosting a Mini Maker Faire at our Main Library. One of the features was our “Intellectual Property Lawyers in the Library” program. This gave inventors or “Makers” the opportunity to speak to a patent attorney in a free, one on one 20 minute session. We had 17 inventors take part in this unique program. Overall, we had over 30 Makers participate in our Maker Faire, showing the public “what they make”, with over 800 people attending the event. Having never done this before, we were amazed at the response and plan to make it a yearly event. We are currently working on one to be held this fall. We continue to teach intellectual property classes on a regular basis, one general class on the various types of intellectual property and our ever popular Patent Searching Class. We also host a local patent attorney quarterly, speaking on various issues related to patents, trademarks and copyrights. We continue to work with two local inventor groups, Inventors Council of Greater Cleveland and The Canton Inventors Association, attending their meetings and offering our services as a PTRC. Staff wise, our Patent team is Michelle Mcneal, Monique Mason and myself. Monique, our PTRC rep was promoted to Manager of the Science and Technology Division a little over a year ago so she has been breaking in our new rep…me! Yes, you can teach an old dog some new tricks! I have been on the Patent Team for 15 years and am coming out of the shadows to take a more active role as the rep. I look forward to this and you will see Michelle and me at conference this year.