Houston’s PTRC is located in Fondren Library, Kelley Center for Government Information. It is part of the Federal Depository Library at Rice University.
Houston PTRC continues to assist inventors in the Houston area, offering monthly patent searching classes, in addition to one on one lessons by appointment. We held fifteen patent and trademark classes and assisted over three hundred area inventors last year. In June 2019, Siu Min Yu attended the STOPfake roadshow in Houston which was sponsored by the Department of Commerce. She had the opportunity to learn from the United States Customs & Border Protection (CBP) about what the CBP is doing to protect intellectual property (IP) in the export market, information on how to protect your business from trade secret theft, how to finance your business and more. Most of all, she had the opportunity to promote the services of Houston PTRC. Afterward, there were a few STOPfake roadshow attendees who came to a patent searching class and learned to use PubEast and PubWest.
In February of 2020, Siu taught patent searching to thirteen students in the ENGI 350 class, Needs Identification and Design Implementation, at Rice University. In March, Siu was scheduled to teach patent searching to ten students in the BIOE 530 class, Medical Engineering and Design Lab 2, in the Medical Innovation Master Program. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 concern, all classes were cancelled. Instead, at the professor’s request, Siu provided her slide presentation to the professor and some annotated information to the professor. Siu kept in touch with the professor if his students should have questions.
Due to COVID-19 concern, Fondren Library is closed to all visitors starting March 18, 2020 until further notice. Most of the library staff are working from home. Information on how to request assistance for patent and trademark information is posted on the library webpage.
Respectfully submitted by
Siu Min Yu