The Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County (PLCH) houses the Patent Resource Center in the Information & Reference Department. One librarian oversees the collection, teaches the classes about Intellectual Property and patent searching, and answers most of the public’s questions about patents, trademark and copyright.
Linda Kocis, Intellectual Property Librarian at PLCH, and John Schlipp, Intellectual Property Librarian at Northern Kentucky University (NKU), collaborated on programs for the NKU BookFest on May 4th. Linda presented one called “Investigating Intellectual Property with the novel Scumble by Ingrid Lawson.” The class of fifth and sixth graders recalled the special abilities of many of the characters from the novel. These abilities give the characters their quirkiness, so the students created a slogan for each character that could stand as the characters “trademark.” Linda talked about copyright, trademarks, patents, and reverse engineering. John Schlipp presented a program called “Masterpiece Respect.” His presentation focused on copyright and respecting creative work, using the characters from the book Masterpiece by Elise Broach as a springboard. Linda and John will be talking about these programs and other collaborations at the Patent & Trademark Resource Center Seminar on Thursday April 18th. For more information, go to http://creativethinking.nku.edu/
The Young Inventors from the third grade at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy visited again this year. They enjoyed defending their patent drawings to the Commissioner of Patents before being granted a Patent Certificate.
Linda Kocis continued to teach classes on patent searching and intellectual property in 2012.