Washington, D.C. – As part of an ongoing dialogue with the high-tech innovation community, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) will host its next public Software Partnership Meeting on Thursday, December 5, 2013, at the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. Partnership Meetings are an opportunity to bring stakeholders together to share ideas, experiences, and insights and to provide a forum for informal discussion of many topics specific to the software community.
The USPTO received ideas from the public regarding future topics of discussion for enhancing the quality of software-related patents at the February Software Partnership Roundtables in Silicon Valley and New York, and from responses to a January 2013 Federal Register Notice. The public expressed an interest in exploring ways to improve the USPTO’s prior art searching techniques and tools. In response to this input, the USPTO is holding the December 5 meeting, which will be webcast, to educate the public on the prior art resources utilized by its examiners. In addition, there will be presentations from selected external speakers on additional prior art resources and search techniques, which will be followed by a question and comments session. This meeting will be of particular interest to search professionals, practitioners interested in search resources, and software industry experts.
What: Software Partnership Meeting
When: Thursday, December 5, 2013 from 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET
Where: USPTO Madison Auditorium North
Concourse Level
Alexandria, VA 22314
More information including directions, the meeting agenda, and RSVP details can be found on the Software Partnership page on the USPTO website: www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/software_partnership.jsp.
For further information, please contact Seema Rao, Director, Technology Center 2100, via e-mail at seema.rao@uspto.gov, or by telephone at 571-272-0800.