Three years ago, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) started expanding its physical presence across the country in order to bring resources to the doorsteps of innovators and help entrepreneurs advance their cutting-edge ideas to the marketplace. Two regional offices are already open and operating – the Elijah J. McCoy Regional Office in Detroit and the Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Denver. Over the next six weeks the USPTO will open permanent offices in two new locations – the Silicon Valley Regional Office in San Jose will open on October 15 and the Texas Regional Office in Dallas will open on November 9. 

Regional offices allow the USPTO to recruit a diverse range of talented technical experts and build the workforce necessary to reduce the backlog of unexamined patents, and ensure pending applications are examined and processed in a timely manner. These operational improvements in turn allow businesses to move their groundbreaking innovations to market faster, provide incentive for investment in new technologies, and directly contribute to the creation of new jobs that grow and sustain our economy.

In an era where businesses are rapidly evolving and the intellectual property landscape is constantly adapting to new and emergent technologies, it’s important to ensure the USPTO can engage effectively with communities, industries, and innovators. This was considered in the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011, signed into law by President Obama. It requires the USPTO to establish regional office locations as part of a larger effort to modernize the U.S. patent system. These offices are important to inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses in the surrounding regions—and to the USPTO’s core mission of fostering American innovation and competitiveness.

Both the Silicon Valley and Dallas offices will create over 100 jobs for highly skilled professionals and bolster the intellectual property protection needs for the regions around them. The USPTO continues to recruit patent examiners in computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering for the Texas Regional Office in Dallas, and additional positions will be posted for all offices at www.usajobs.gov, keyword: USPTO, as they become available. Visit the locations page of the USPTO website to learn more about the USPTO’s regional offices.