Stillwater, OK

The Oklahoma State University Library has been a Patent and Trademark Depository Library since 1956. We are housed in the main University Library and are part of the Government Documents Department, a regional depository for federal government documents.

Researchers/inventors make appointments with us to work one-on-one, and I have been handling a great deal of this by phone and email. Our website includes most of our service information and links to information for inventors at USPTO: http://www.library.okstate.edu/patents/

Our PTRC plays a support role to other IP departments on campus in addition to working with independent inventors. I work with the New Product Development/Inventor’s Assistance Center, also the Technology Development Center (tech transfer office). I train their graduate assistants annually and encourage them to have clients requiring in-depth research assistance contact us. A collaborative project with NPDC resulted in online training modules in the area of new product development and intellectual property http://ias.okstate.edu/training-modules. I provide a bimonthly seminar on trademarks for the Food and Agricultural Products Center. I team teach classes in engineering with our engineering librarian – he covers the engineering databases and I cover patents.

I continue to emphasize to researchers and students the importance of searching patents in addition to journal literature as a supplement to traditional research. The LibGuide I have developed “Patents Online: Basics for Researchers,” includes an overview of patents in addition to searching by topic and fields, http://info.library.okstate.edu/patentsonline

I am serving on the University’s Intellectual Property Screening Committee, under the University’s Technology Development Center, meeting periodically to review applications submitted by OSU faculty as potential research for commercialization.

With help from my PTRCA colleagues I was able to get East up and running! Thank you to the PTRC Office for all of their help and support.

Many thanks to Martin Wallace for managing the PTRCA website. With his support, and that of the Publications Committee, we have been able to change the PTRCA publication title to Journal allowing us to include articles about special projects and initiatives at the PTRCs. Special thanks also to Hal Mendelsohn and Tiffany Mair for their help in recreating past issues of the newsletter/journal.