2019 - Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association

Honolulu, HI

Hawaii State Library
Submitted by: Emily Dovermann

Greetings from the Honolulu Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC). Established on December 18, 1989, our PTRC is located at the Federal Documents Section of the Hawaii State Library in downtown Honolulu, Hawaii. As the only PTRC in the State of Hawaii and the Pacific Region, we support the diverse intellectual property needs of the public in the region.

Throughout the year we received a steady number of visits from individuals and groups seeking training on patent or trademark searching. Continue reading

Houghton, Michigan

Michigan Technological University
Submitted by: Annelise Doll

Michigan Technological University’s J. Robert Van Pelt and John and Ruanne Opie Library has been home to a PTRC since 2013. PTRC representatives Annelise Doll and Katie Edson lead several new programs in the last year.

October 18th, 2018: Innovation Day with a visit from the new Director of the Midwest Regional USPTO, Damian Porcari, and James McPherson, primary examiner for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and Assistant to the Regional Outreach Officer and Regional Director. Continue reading

Houston, TX

Rice University
Submitted by: Siu Min Yu

2018 was a quiet year for Houston’s PTRC, though, we still assisted many local inventors.

In 2018, we had 231 requests of patent and trademark information through walked in, emails, appointments and phone calls. We held fourteen patent and trademark searching classes and there were forty-two attendees. We also had six people who came in to use PubEast and PubWest in 2018 and early 2019. Of the six people, one is an IP attorney. Continue reading

Little Rock, AR

Arkansas State Library
Submitted by: Michael Strickland

Greetings from the Little Rock PTRC located within Information Services at the Arkansas State Library! Besides being Manager of Information Services I also serve as the agency’s representative to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The Little Rock PTRC has been a PTDL/PTRC since 18 January 1985. Unfortunately, I will not be attending this year’s PTRC Annual Training Seminar. However, I will be sending another very talented person to attend in my place. I will miss seeing you and send all the best from Arkansas! Continue reading

Minneapolis, MN

Minneapolis Central Library
Submitted by: Walt Johnson and Amelia Cohoes

Minnesota inventors kept us busy at the Minneapolis Central Library this past year. In addition to the monthly “patent talk” we hosted 3 classes on how to write and file a provisional patent application, which was presented by an attorney from LegalCORPS, a pro-bono lawyers group that serves the upper Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin).

Amelia Cohoes and Walt Johnson were invited to speak at the Inventors Network meeting in April, Continue reading

Morgantown, WV

West Virginia University
Submitted by: Marian Armour-Gemmen

The Evansdale Library at West Virginia University in Morgantown serves not only our campus with engineers, agriculturists, and designers, but also health professionals, business students, scientists, young entrepreneurs from WVU as well as inventors and entrepreneurs throughout the State of West Virginia. The PTRC (begun in 1991) is a key part of WVU’s IDEA Hub which encompasses WVU’s services to entrepreneurs and innovators who are students, faculty, and citizens of West Virginia. Through this Hub I receive referrals from the WVU LaunchLab, Continue reading

Orlando, FL

University of Central Florida
Submitted by: Rebecca Murphey

The Orlando PTRC has been located at the John C. Hitt Library at the University of Central Florida since December 30, 1988. The highlight of the year for the Orlando PTRC was the UCF-hosted seminar, “Researching Patent and Trademark Information”, on December 13, 2018, in celebration of 30 years as a Patent and Trademark depository library. Rob Berry and Neil Massong led Thursday’s day-long event for about 75 enthusiastic attendees. The well-received program featured an IP overview, Continue reading

Philadelphia, PA

Free Library of Philadelphia
Submitted by: Sharyl Overhiser

The Philadelphia PTRC has been located in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Parkway Central Library since 1986. Its home is the Business Resource and Innovation Center (BRIC) Department which is moving to a beautiful new space within the library on April 12, 2019. The new space will provide even more programming space for one-on-one PTRC consultations, classes, networking and IP professional office hours for our patrons in conjunction with our other BRIC services for business, Continue reading

Riverside, CA

University of California, Riverside
Submitted by: Swati Bhattacharyya

In 2018, PTRC@UCR offered 60 consultation sessions. As part of the outreach service, the PTRC Representative conducted (i) two workshops at UCR, one each on patents and trademarks and of 90 minutes duration (ii) one information session, in collaboration with Riverside Public Library, on the value of intellectual properties and more specifically on patents and trademarks, of 90 minute duration (iii) a brief information session on USPTO and PTRC services at Startups for Innovator’s Workshop I-NSF Innovation Corps. Continue reading

Rochester, NY

Rochester Public Library
Submitted by: Kate Meddaugh

2018 was an exciting year for the Carlson Patent and Trademark Center (Carlson Center). The number of users of the Carlson Center has increased tremendously this year, and one contributing factor is my new supervisor. She came to the Science and History division back in July of 2017, and brought with her a slew of connections she secured while working in the Business Division. The Carlson Center benefited greatly from this, and consequently, the number of users has grown. Continue reading

Salt Lake City, UT

University of Utah
Submitted by: Alfred Mowdood

The University of Utah and the J. Willard Marriott Library have been a PTRC since 1984. The big news from Utah is that the Marriott Library continues to increase its outreach and has hired a new science librarian with an interest in patent searching. Ms. Tallie Casucci comes from the Eccles Health Science Library and is the library liaison to the University’s nationally ranked Entertainment Arts & Engineering program, Biomedical Engineering, College of Health, Center for Technology & Continue reading

Stillwater, OK

Oklahoma State University Library
Submitted by: Suzanne Reinman

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 U.S. government documents. The website for the PTRCA in Stillwater includes most of our service information and links to information for inventors: https://info.library.okstate.edu/patent-and-trademark-resource-center

I am working with independent inventors primarily by phone and email, assisting them in locating several relevant patents in Google Patents and then searching the related CPC and U.S. Continue reading

University Park, PA

Penn State University
Submitted by: John Meier

John Meier is the Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC) Librarian for University Park, PA located in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library at Penn State University. This year the University Park PTRC celebrated 40 years in the program. On November 14th, 2018 Rob Berry and Amelia Cohoes from the PTRC headquarters drove on snowy roads from Alexandria, VA to central Pennsylvania to present a wonderful public program to our students, faculty, and community. Over the course of the day we had almost 100 attendees, Continue reading

Wichita, KS

Wichita State University
Submitted by: Sara Butts

The Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC) at Wichita State University (WSU) has continued to grow as a recognized resource in the entrepreneurial support network of the Wichita metro area and surrounding hubs that are looking to Wichita as a model for entrepreneurial resources. Ablah Library became a Patent and Trademark Depository Library (PTDL) in 1991 and in the last few years our PTRC has grown to become more essential to the campus community at WSU with the growing emphasis on innovation and applied learning. Continue reading