During the past 12 months, the Government Information Center at the Dallas Public Library has continued intellectual property programs started during years past. We see new opportunity going forward, especially as we have now regained access to the PubWEST tool.

Approximately every other month, the division hosts One-to-One: Questions and Answers, a program we have hosted continuously since 2004, made possible by the generous endeavors of patent attorney Bob Wise. During the 20-minute sessions, Bob answers questions from individual inventors in a private setting. Bob is a former patent examiner and the president of the Texas Inventors Association. The program is generally booked to capacity each time it is offered. Patron comments from the sessions are typically very positive, and include responses such as “It was great!” and “I got all the information I was looking for.”

A Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trials and Appeals Board Judge who lives in the Dallas area once again made use of the Library’s videoconference facility to participate in an Appeals Board hearing.

In September 2009, the division offered the program Effective Product Development: Patenting and Marketing Your Idea, aimed at assisting local inventors. Patent Attorney Robert Wise presented tips on the patenting process; Vice President of Exceptional Products, Inc., Elliott Brackett discussed marketing and distribution of products; and respected local model-builder Matt Smithers presented do-it-yourself tips for making affordable prototypes.

In October 2009, Steve Gaither joined the Government Information Center division as the new Patent Librarian.

Oklahoma-based Patent Agent Robert Frantz presented a free training session, Writing a Claim for Your Patent Application: A Guide for the Do-It-Yourself Inventor, at the library in November.

In November, the division also verified that PubWEST is once again available on select computers at the Dallas Public Library. Access had been lost several years ago after a information systems firewall upgrade. A brief tutorial guiding staff in logging in was refined from the instructions written some years ago. We expect to hear more requests for use as we promote the availability of the database. Notably, one of the patrons who visited specifically for this tool was a patent attorney who had not used the database before. The attorney commented that “PubWEST is the best search tool I have ever used. I just accomplished in ten minutes what it would have taken me hours to do in [other databases] and I’m sure I just scratched the surface.” We hope to garner more comments like this as we make efforts to publicize the availability of the tool in the future.