Working remotely from March through July, patent and trademark reference assistance for researchers and inventors continued by phone and email. I created a link on our PTRC website for the USPTO COVID Response Resource Center.
In August, I contacted all new OSU faculty in the STEM disciplines regarding the Patent and Trademark Resource Center on campus. I contributed copies of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center brochure to new faculty packets for the fall semester. Our Library offered a FAST START workshop series in August; I taught a Using Patents for Research class as part of these webinars. I assist the engineering librarian with IP basics and preliminary patent and trademark research for design projects in engineering classes, also Intellectual Property and Preliminary Patent Research using the USPTO website for the Engineering Leadership Series. All of these classes were recorded in Zoom this year.
I present a bimonthly workshop on Trademark Research, for the OSU Robert M. Kerr Food & Agricultural Products Center (FAPC). This is a workshop sponsored by the FAPC for entrepreneurs working with a food business or related product. Trademarks: Protecting Your Product or Business Name includes how to determine and search for a mark and or logo at the federal or state level for a product and or business. This was also recorded this year and generated many questions on trademarks.
In September I gave a webinar for the Oklahoma Small Business Development Center: Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Trade Secrets: How can you protect your invention, product, brand name, logo or short story.
I met with the new Vice President for Technology and Economic Development at OSU in November to review PTRC and other IP resources on campus. We are planning a program on the USPTO’s Expanding American Innovation initiative for April 2021 with the Director at the Texas Regional Office as the keynote speaker. I have been forwarding information from the PTRCA listserv to him, including databases and training webinars for Innovation Q, design patents, etc.
We are continuing to identify and add patents issued to the university to SHAREOK, the university’s repository and I am serving on the university’s Intellectual Property Screening Committee which meets several times a year to review applications submitted by OSU faculty.
Working with five other PTRC libraries, a Best Practices for PTRC libraries was finalized and submitted to the Program Office the USPTO in 2021. This will be presented at the upcoming seminar and linked from the PTRCA website. It has been a privilege to work on this with colleagues this year.