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Metro Detroit scores nation's first regional patent office

Thursday, January 13, 2011

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Ann Arbor

One of the big reasons Toyota set up its technical center in Ann Arbor decades ago was so it could be close to an EPA facility there. Toyota now employs more than 1,000 there today. Imagine what the U.S.'s first regional patent office could do for Metro Detroit.

Excerpt:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is adding to the list of agencies with satellite offices outside of the D.C. region. It's part of a new hiring program that will add one hundred people to USPTO's ranks.

"For the first time in our 230-odd year history we are going to be opening an office outside of the Washington DC area and the city that we've chosen for that is Detroit, Michigan."

David Kappos, Director of the USPTO and Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, definitely sounded excited when he told Federal News Radio about the expansion.

"...One of the main reasons we're doing this is to get access to the talented workforce of professionals in the Detroit area, people who have the right qualifications to be patent examiners in an area where the cost of living is very attractive, where there's access to great universities - the University of Michigan among them..."

Read the rest of the story here, and more here and here.

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