PTRC News for 2014

The Georgia Tech PTRC continued to provide intellectual property services to faculty and students on campus as well as individual inventors throughout the state of Georgia. We conducted over 300 individual consultation and training sessions for inventors and researchers with their patent and trademark needs. The Patent and Trademark Research Guides we created/updated have been accessed over 6,600 times during 2013.

Joanne Tobin returned to her retirement in Sept. 2013 after serving one year as an acting patent coordinator. Continue reading

The Cincinnati Patent & Trademark Resource Center is located in the Information & Reference department of the Main Branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County (PLCH). The Main Library takes up two city blocks, and is consistently one of the busiest urban branches in the nation. Linda Kocis oversees the collection, teaches classes about Intellectual Property, and answers most of the public’s questions about patents, trademarks, and copyright. PLCH has been a member of the PTRC since the program started, Continue reading

Greetings from Dallas Public Library! The Library’s PTRC, established in 1977, is located in the Government Information Center on the 6th Floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. Although our staff is small, and shares responsibility for collections from both the 6th and 5th Floors (Business and Technology), we do benefit from having more than one person with some degree of experience working with patent and trademark information including PTRC Representative Greg Browder, in addition to a handful of other “seasoned” library staff who assist 5th and 6th Floor customers. Continue reading

The Detroit Public Library has been a PTRC since 1871; one of the founding members of the program. I would like to think that we had helped companies such as Detroit Stove Works patent their gas stove (843,644) in 1907. We continue to keep material for historic patent research, as well as current materials and access to online databases. In addition we promote our business resources, which can help inventors with marketing their product. We believe in the PTRC as an aid to local economic development. Continue reading

Emily Dovermann, Arlene Nagamine and I send a fond aloha to all the survivors of the Polar Vortex. We have been reading how Mother Nature is quite the trickster.

After many, many months of struggling with our PubWEST, and PubEAST connection, we think that the new method of accessing both databases through SEAS will finally allow us to use both of them. We can now log on through our dedicated Patent and Trademark Workstation and our public access computer. Continue reading

Whatever Happened in 2013?
• Lots of noise made by 3D printers and happy patrons looking at the printing results.
• A new relationship with a new Patent and Trademark Resource Center at Northern Kentucky University. Welcome aboard!
• Lots of interest in phone apps and the attendant software, trademarks, and equipment issues.
• A lot of outreach activities done by the Head of Main Information Services, 2nd floor, Charlton Braganza, Continue reading

Wendt Commons Library serves the departments of Engineering, Computer Science, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, and Statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The library has been a PTDL/PTRC since 1976.

The PTRC representative is Nancy Spitzer. Jody Hoesly, who is now Wendt’s Assistant Director for Information Services, also specializes in patent and trademark information. We answered about 100 patent inquiries in person, by phone, email and chat last year. People also find us through our web pages and Patents Libguide. Continue reading

Evansdale Library at West Virginia University has been a depository since 1991. The Evansdale Library serves Engineering, Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, Education, Creative Arts and Physical Education. Independent as well as university inventors come to the Evansdale Library for assistance. I continue to work with university departments and the WVU Office of Technology Transfer as well as independent inventors. Different department I have spoken to about patent and trademarks include Horticulture, Mechanical Engineering, and Law. Continue reading