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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/1/2025 1:53 AM, Dan Feigelson
wrote:<br>
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<div>Seems to me the implementation of the satellite offices was
not done intelligently. </div>
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<div>For starters, while I'm in favor of the PTO having physical
offices with all members of a GAU in the same office (see
below), if you're going to allow people to work from home, as
the PTO does, then there's little sense in having physical
offices.</div>
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<div>Second, if you're going to have physical offices, then the
entire art unit should be in the same physical office. It's
better for training, it's better for institutional memory and
continuity, it's better for applicants.</div>
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<div>Third, an impetus, perhaps the principal impetus, for
setting up satellite offices was that the cost of living in
DC/NoVA was high. So in that regard, a Detroit office sort of
made sense, although locating it in downtown Detroit probably
made less sense. But even if they'd put it in the suburbs,
public transportation in southeast Michigan is poor, so
Michigan might not have been the best choice. But San Jose as
a cheaper alternative to DC? Maybe SJ is better than San
Francisco, but I'm certain there are less expensive areas that
could have served the purpose. If all the people working in
GAUs related to Silicon Valley technologies were located in
the San Jose office, using the SJ location might have made
sense. But that's not the way it was done, so why put
it specifically in SJ in the first place?</div>
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</div>
<div>Anyway, sounds like the Denver "office" was never really an
office.</div>
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<p>There you go again trying to apply reason and logic to a
situation.</p>
<p>What is (or was) the problem for which a non-Alexandria patent
office is (or was) the solution? The USPTO press release is, in a
weird way, actually somewhat candid about the mission shift on
this. "Over time, the purpose of the offices has shifted to an
outreach function and the offices were rebranded as \u201cregional
outreach offices ..."</p>
<p>One can construct any of half a dozen problem-solution
explanations that might have worked back when the Denver patent
office opened, and half a dozen different explanations as of (say)
this past December, and still others on and after the present
Presidency.</p>
<p>From my own point of view as a client-serving practitioner
located in the same state as the Denver patent office, the recent
shifts to forcing USPTO people to cease work-from-home and resume
showing up in the office for work was going to offer a great
benefit. It was going to be possible, if I had requested oral
argument in a patent appeal, to pick the Denver patent office as
the place to conduct the in-person oral argument, with the three
PTAB judges showing up in person at the Denver patent office to
conduct the argument.</p>
<p>That's gone now given the announced closure of the Denver patent
office.</p>
<p>But as of right now, if I have requested oral argument in patent
appeal, I could pick the San Jose patent office or the Dallas
patent office or the Detroit patent office as the place to conduct
my in-person oral argument, with the three PTAB judges showing up
in person at the San Jose or Dallas or Detroit patent office to
conduct the argument.</p>
<p>"Outreach" in this context is a joke. An expensive joke, but a
joke. The fiction is that there are "communities in which
outreach and IP education are most needed" and that somehow an
office such as the Denver patent office would somehow reach one or
more of those target "communities". The plan fact is that if you
throw a dart at the map of the US, it will land at some location
that is distant from any of the existing non-Alexandria patent
offices. It will land at some location from which it is
impossible to travel to any of the non-Alexandria patent offices
by public transportation. </p>
<p>Closing the Denver patent office will not save any taxpayer
money. Not a penny. It is in an enormous GSA (General Services
Administration) building in downtown Denver. The building serves
as office space for half a dozen federal agencies. Since maybe 13
years ago, the Denver patent office has been occupying one story
of the building (the tenth floor) with the floors above and below
occupied by other federal agencies or being vacant. Other stories
of that building contain, for example, offices of the Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS), and an Office of
Intergovernmental and External Affairs, and some immigration
courts. The land on which it sits is owned by the federal
government. The building is owned and operated by the federal
government.</p>
<p>When the Denver patent office formally closes, the taxpayers will
still be paying for that tenth floor. It will no longer come
through the USPTO budget of taxpayer money, but will instead come
through a general GSA budget of taxpayer money. But the taxpayers
will still be paying for that tenth floor and for the rest of the
building.</p>
<p>I believe that from 2014 (when the Denver patent office opened)
to the present, there have been many stretches of weeks during
which not even a single member of any "community in which outreach
and IP education are most needed" came to visit the Denver patent
office. Probably this has really been stretches of months. To
even set foot in that patent office, you have to pass through very
unfriendly airport-style security. From 2014 to the present,
there have been many stretches of months during which not a single
in-person public event took place at that Denver patent office.</p>
<p>Was it ever, at any time, possible to show up at the Denver
patent office with a patent application in your hands and file it
at the patent office to get a filing date? No. Was it ever
possible, when sitting at home in front of your computer, to
e-file a patent application "at the Denver patent office" and get
a same day filing date by doing it just before midnight in the
Mountain Time Zone? No. </p>
<p>We return to the unexpectedly somewhat candid press release which
says "physical office space is less necessary because of ... the
increased popularity of virtual education and outreach events."
Meaning, I guess, that to the extent we are maintaining the
fiction that the USPTO is unwavering in its diligent efforts to "members
of communities in which outreach and IP education are most
needed", this fiction is fulfilled by offering webinars that would
be attended by these underserved pools of would-be patent
applicants. And yes, if you are going to attend such a webinar,
it sort of does not matter where in North America you happen to be
located, and it does not matter which patent office the presenters
happened to be located in when they clicked on their presentation
slides.</p>
<p>On September 12 I was a presenter at a PCT training seminar in
the San Jose patent office, and on September 16 I was a presenter
at a PCT training seminar in the Denver patent office. On October
24 I will be a presenter at a PCT training seminar in the Dallas
patent office, and on October 28 I will be a presenter at a PCT
training seminar in the Detroit patent office. Each of these four
seminars, at USPTO's insistence, has been set up so that people
can attend virtually by attending a webinar. It is ridiculous.
Throw a dart at a map of the US, and a would-be patent applicant
at that location could sign up for any of these four webinars.
What is the problem for which four webinars (on identical subject
matter) is a solution? Why not just conduct one webinar and the
would-be remote attendees could attend that single webinar?</p>
<p>What was the real purpose of those first four non-Alexandria
patent offices (Denver, San Jose, Dallas, Detroit) in 2014? Those
who followed the news saw what was really going on. Senators from
dozens of states lobbied to try to get one of the four budgeted
non-Alexandria patent offices planted in their state. This was
all just ordinary politics. Any time that it got decided that one
of the four budgeted patent offices would go to a particular
state, the senators from that state would issue press releases
celebrating the jobs that would be created in that state and the
imminent explosion of innovation that was soon to follow in that
state.</p>
<p> </p>
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