Our PTRC is located in the Science and Technology Room of our Central Library. I have been working at the Saint Louis Public Library since 2002. Since I returned to the renovated Central Library in 2012, after offering patent and trademark reference at one of our regional branches for two years while the Central Library was being renovated.
I have been writing a blog for our PTRC (http://www.slplptrc.blogspot.com). Local inventor resources, events, and patent and trademark highlights are posted. I have a PTRC business card that has this PTRC blog website. Thus, when I attend local Venture Café meetings, I hand-out my card to increase readership. Our monthly St. Louis Inventors Association meetings, which meets at the Venture Café, has 100 entrepreneurs, inventors, attorneys, and business people attending. I set-up an information table with USTPO handouts, our PTRC bookmark, and my business card to encourage people to visit our Saint Louis Public Library PTRC.
2015 was another exciting year for the St. Louis Public Library, Missouri, PTRC with the added addition of a Pro-Bono Patent Program now available for Missouri. Michele Rutledge, the Executive Director of the Gateway Venture Mentoring Service (GVMS) offered a new pro-bono workshop that gave attorneys 1.0 continuing legal education credits (CLE’s) and explained how this new program works.
Again, as in 2014, Prof. Patricia Lee, the coordinator of the Saint Louis University School (SLO) of Law Pro-Bono Trademark Program, taught two trademark workshops for our PTRC. We are thrilled that this new program was started in 2014 at SLU School of Law by the USPTO. We recommend, on a daily basis, that our PTRC customers check with both the Gateway VMS and the SLU School of Law to see if they qualify for the patent or trademark Pro-Bono programs.
Two first-time offered workshops, taught by Spruce Fraser, the PTRC librarian, were on Pub-East and Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC). Both of these helped our PTRC Customers learn about keyword searching for patents and the new CPC classification for patents.
Two African-American Inventor workshops were offered in 2015. Attendees had an opportunity to learn about patents from a local attorney. This class was first offered in 2014. It was very popular with our patent and trademark PTRC customers.
Five patent workshops were offered in 2015. Of these, two were taught by a local corporate attorney who kindly offered their patent expertise. The other three I taught in a training room that I had laptops available for each participant to practice their searches.
Finally, I prepared a display of John Olin’s patents that complemented a program about this famous Saint Louis entrepreneur, outdoorsman, and philanthropist.
As well, I completed my position of President of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association in March, 2015.