There were many significant events in the PTRC at Rice University this past year. Most significantly, Linda Spiro retired in August. We miss her presence, her expertise and most importantly her baked goods! Only a few weeks after Linda’s retirement, Houston was hit by Hurricane Harvey. The University was closed for a week due to the extensive flooding in the Houston area. (photo below) A scheduled patent searching class on that weekend was cancelled. Luckily, the University suffered only minor water damage in a couple of buildings and the library only had some water leakage in a few areas. In the Kelley Center, we sustained damage to a few ceiling tiles in both the office and stacks areas, but fortunately no materials got wet.
Linda Spiro and Siu Min Yu taught patent searching classes alternately each month. After Linda retired, Siu Min Yu continued to teach patent searching classes each month, and offered one-to-one sessions on Patent and Trademark searching by appointment.
We were happy to greet Peter Choi, the Resource Supervisory Patent Examiner in the Texas Regional Office who came to Fondren Library for a visit in early December, 2017. The purpose was to discuss how the Regional Office can help Houston PTRC in outreach. The discussion prompted a half day public program titled “Intellectual Property” held on February 7, 2018; presented by Hope Shimabuku, Director of the Texas Regional Office, and Jacob Choi, Assistant director of the Texas Regional Office. (Include photos) We had a good number of attendees and many of them signed up for the upcoming patent searching class
The February event, in turn, created additional public interest. Our department head, Kathy Hart Weimer, was approached by a producer from local television station KPRC-TV/NBC, who requested an interview for a news feature on the topic of inventions. Kathy shared some background information about the PTRC and referred the producer to the Houston Inventor’s Association. The resulting story included a short video of the interior of Fondren Library and a link to our next patent searching class. See here for the link to the TV news story: https://www.click2houston.com/consumer/how-to-make-money-with-invention
We are looking forward to another productive year.
Rising water from Hurricane Harvey made Entrance 17 at Stockton and University impassable though much of the storm. Courtesy of Rice University Police Department.