Howdy, folks, and welcome to the Dallas Public Library in Dallas, Texas. Good things happened at the Dallas library: new staff was hired, new programs were developed, and community relations prospered.
An all-day Patent and Trademark seminar for the public in September was presented by trainers from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Alexandria Virginia, as well as representatives of Dallas-area organizations that offer assistance to inventors and entrepreneurs, such as the Texas Inventors Association and the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Technology Commercialization Center. Ninety-three people attended the event, a turnout garnering attention and praise from the USPTO and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office for the Under Secretary for IP (Intellectual Property.) Reception to the seminar was overwhelming positive, both in terms of numbers of attendees and in evaluations received (almost exclusively “excellent” ratings.) Michelle Lee, Deputy Director of the USPTO, emailed Government Information Center Patent Librarian Greg Browder to say, “I want to personally thank you for the incredible work you did for the Dallas PTRC [Patent and Trademark Resource Center] IP education event. I know it took a tremendous amount of vision and hard work to make the event the great success that it was.”
We continued to offer the bi-monthly One-to-One Question and Answer Workshops, a program that we began hosting in 1998. Greg Browder coordinated these workshops which provide individual inventors an opportunity to sit down for a 20-minute session meeting with Bob Wise, registered Patent Attorney and former Patent Examiner, as well as the president of the Texas Inventors Association. This program is typically booked to capacity, and receives high ratings from attendees, yielding comments such as these from workshops in 2014: “The discussion was thorough and well done.” “Johanna and Greg made my experience pleasant. They were knowledgeable of the subject, and helped focus my questions to use my time wisely. Bob Wise helped me gain focus and set some goals.” “Thanks for your service to the public.” “Wealth of information! We need more services like this.”
In November, Kathy Berry, the new PTRC representative, started along with four other new staff members. All Government Information staff members are now versed in helping patrons start the patent, trademark and copyright search process with the new USPTO website, the informative 7-step video, and handouts and books. PubEast and PubWest continued to increase opportunities for the potential inventors to search information and get acquainted with the new CPC system.