Linda Kocis is the Intellectual Property Librarian at the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County. She oversees the Patent & Trademark Resource Center, which is housed in the Information & Reference Department at the Main Library in downtown Cincinnati. In addition to courses in patent and trademark searching, Linda meets with customers individually to answer all types of questions including those about filing applications. Linda also serves as the Secretary on the Board of the Inventor’s Council of Cincinnati. The Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County has been a member of the PTRC since the program started, and is lucky to have bound patents going back to the late 1840s. They even have British patents from 1640-1915.
The Inventor’s Council of Cincinnati (ICC) is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization that holds monthly meetings at the Main Library. They also organize an annual contest called the First Filament Awards to encourage their members to develop, prototype and market inventions. In 2016, Geoff Saylor pitched a new construction tool called “The Beep-N-Bang,” a stud finder that attaches to a nail gun thereby eliminating the need to find and mark studs. After his success with the First Filament Awards, he was accepted into an accelerator program called First Batch (https://firstbatch.org/). He has since gone on to start a small business, InnoTool, (http://www.innotool.us/) and has created another tool “The Board Stretcher” targeted at builders and remodelers. Geoff used the resources available at the Public Library to learn about intellectual property and build his initial prototypes.