[Patentpractice] Denver patent office closing!

[Carl Oppedahl]

On 10/1/2025 1:53 AM, Dan Feigelson wrote:
> 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.

There you go again trying to apply reason and logic to a situation.

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 “regional outreach offices ..."

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.

 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.

That's gone now given the announced closure of the Denver patent office.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.
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