[Patentpractice] Denver patent office closing? (was Re: Patent Center change)

[Dan Feigelson]

Seems to me the implementation of the satellite offices was not done
intelligently.

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.

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.

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?

Anyway, sounds like the Denver "office" was never really an office.

Dan

On Wed, Oct 1, 2025 at 7:54 AM Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice <
patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> wrote:

> On 9/29/2025 4:15 PM, David Hricik via Patentpractice wrote:
>
>
> I also heard a rumor (maybe it is old news) that the Denver regional
> office employees were not part of a back-to-the-office order, and rumor is
> it is shutting down?
>
> Well, folks, you heard it here from David first.
>
> Yes, the USPTO just now announced that it is going to shut down the Denver
> patent office.
>
> I guess one might have seen this coming, when the Director of the Denver
> patent office, Molly Kocialski announced (three weeks ago) that she was
> done at the Denver patent office and had joined the well known Denver law
> firm Holland and Hart.
>
> The USPTO's announcement says:
>
> As of December of 2024, the number of employees in the Rocky Mountain
> office had dropped to less than 10.
>
> Of course the correct way to say it would have been "fewer than 10".
>
> But anyway, yes it seems the Denver patent office will close.
>
>
>
>
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