Georgia Tech PTRC Annual Activities Report 2017-8 Georgia Tech Library has been a part of the PTRC Program since 1946. Lisha Li is the current PTRC Representative at Georgia Tech and she has served in this capacity over eight year.
With the Library Renewal underway, along with many other on-going projects, Georgia Tech Library’s physical spaces and library services are evolving to meet the changing research, teaching, and learning needs of Georgia Tech. Though most librarians have been relocated elsewhere on campus over a year, library services have been publicized broadly through various communication channels on campus, drawing more students and researchers to the library. Librarians are teaching classes on and beyond traditional topics, in addition to course-based instruction, such as EndNote, InDesign, OpenRefine, Tableau, etc. Patent classes have always been among the popular ones. Georgia Tech PTRC continued offering regular patent search classes throughout the year. From April 2017 to March 2018, over 200 inventors, entrepreneurs, students, researchers and others attended these open patent classes. Many of them continued their invention journeys afterwards and some filed their patent applications while others made progress with their products.
In early 2017, Lisha obtained a GT-FIRE Mini: Small Funding for Big Ideas grant from the Provost office to organize Intellectual Property (IP) related seminars on campus. Collaborating with the PTRCP office, USPTO, and many units on campus, such as Industry Engagement (Technology Licensing), the Manufacturing Institute, InVenture Prize, VentureLab, Georgia Patents – Georgia’s Patent Pro Bono program, we organized an IP Seminar Series on variety topics, such as Patent Pro Bono Program (by Grant Corboy, USPTO, and Meredith Ragains, Georgia Patents); Patent infringement litigation (by Philip Burrus, a local attorney); Implementing a new manufacturing vision (by Dr Ben Wang, Director of Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute); Technology licensing at GTRC (by Dr. Terry Bray, Georgia Tech Research Corporation); Patent claims workshop (by Zandra Smith, USPTO). These seminars drew a lot of interests from both on and off campus. Over 230 people participated in 9 seminars and actively joined discussions. They provided very positive feedback afterwards and recommended topics for future seminars as well. Thanks to librarians and library staff who volunteered to make these seminars happen on campus.
In April, 2017, Lisha was invited by the Southeastern Inventors Association to give a talk on Patent assistance and patent search to local inventors and entrepreneurs. In May, Lisha attended the Patent Information User Group annual meeting held in Atlanta where she made connections with other patent professionals. In Oct., Lisha was invited by faculty members from the Scheller College of Business’s TI:GER (Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results) Program, a collaboration between Georgia Tech and Emory University School of Law,to give a lecture on patent search tools to graduate students. In Nov., Lisha was invited to talk about patenting trends and innovation support systems to a graduate level class at Beihang University in Beijing, China. In Dec. 2017, Lisha trained all the Public Services staff members on patents, helping them assist patrons with patent and trademark related questions while working at the library services desk area. In Feb., 2018, Lisha gave a lecture to an Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Methods class on patent documents for research.
As the only PTRC in metro Atlanta and in the state of Georgia, we continued providing individual patent and trademark consultation sessions to inventors and entrepreneurs. Some found us through the USPTO, others via web sites, social media, words of mouth, or referral from other people. Georgia Tech PTRC will be interested in participating in the USPTO’s Virtual Assistance program in the future when the library renewal project is completed. We are very interested in learning from other PTRCs who have been or are going to be a part of this program.
Image: Dr. Terry Bray from Georgia Tech’s Industry Engagement answers technology licensing related questions at an IP seminar held on the Georgia Tech campus on Sept. 19, 2017.
Image: Philip Burrus, a patent attorney talks about patent litigation at an IP seminar held on the Georgia Tech campus on July 27, 2017.