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A center aimed at serving inventors and entrepreneurs, including those from underrepresented backgrounds.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will open a community assistance office in Strafford County to serve innovators in the New England region, officials announced Wednesday.
The agency also plans to open a new regional office in Atlanta to serve the Southeast region. That office is expected to open by December 2025, with a New Hampshire office to follow shortly thereafter, according to a news release.
The offices will serve as resource centers serving inventors and entrepreneurs, including those from underrepresented backgrounds, according to the release. The specific location was not mentioned. Dover is the county seat of Strafford, which also includes Rochester, Somersworth, and Durham.
“President Biden has often said that America can be defined in one word: potential,” Kathy Vidal, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said in a statement. “These new offices are a commitment to the administration’s commitment to fostering economic growth and job creation by meeting people where they are and strengthening the USPTO’s ability to connect them to critical resources that help stimulate and strengthen the innovation ecosystem. We support these efforts.”
The creation of the new office is part of the Free America’s Innovators Act of 2022, which was signed into law in December 2022.
The selection of the new regional office was made on the basis of legal criteria, which stipulates that the decision must be based on several characteristics, including:
- Number of patent-intensive industries near the site.
- How many research-intensive institutions, including higher education institutions, are located near the site.
- State and local legal frameworks that support intellectual property-intensive industries near the site.
- Our office’s proximity to individual inventors, small businesses, veterans, low-income populations, students, rural populations, and geographic innovator groups that are underrepresented in patent filings.
The location decision for the Northern New England Community Outreach Office was based on the following criteria:
- Located in an area with at least one public and one private higher education institution.
- Jurisdictions with 15 or fewer registered patent attorneys.
- In this jurisdiction, businesses owned by women, minorities, and veterans account for less than 45% of total business ownership.
The new office will join current patent office outreach offices in Alexandria, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and San Jose.
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