 Using your creativity to build a winning venture or product is important for entrepreneurs. But after putting forth a tremendous amount of effort to build something, protecting your inventions and brand become critical. Thankfully, the US Patent and Trademark Office exists to help inventors and business owners stake their claim for the intellectual property they develop. It is America's Innovation Agency. Just as veterans answer the call to defend our nation, the US PTO defends business owners, their work and ideas. Joining us today are Christopher Harris, Ray Vasquez and the team at US PTO to talk about intellectual property basics and answer your questions. Welcome Ray. Thank you Dan, can you guys hear me okay? Got it. Thanks. My name is Reinaldo Vasquez, you guys can call me Ray. I am the Texas Regional Outreach Officer here for the US PTO Texas Regional Office. I'm very happy to be here today. Myself, I'm an Army veteran, still currently in the Army National Guard. I used to work for the US Small Business Administration doing economic development for about 11 and a half years. And now I transition over to US PTO to help manage the outreach activities that we do throughout the year. So I'm happy to be here teaching you guys on intellectual property, what US PTO is, how it works and the resources that we have. A lot of people do not know that we have a lot of resources for inventors. They're looking to go after patents and even small businesses are looking to go into patents and trademarks as well. So with me today, I do have Christopher Harris, Michonne Hunter and Carmen Lyles-Ervin. And I'll pass it over to them to do a quick introduction and then we can get started with the presentation. Chris. All right, thank you Ray. How are you doing? My name is Chris Harris. I'm a patent examiner at the US PTO. Been at the PTO for about 10 years, but however I've been wearing a different hat for the past year as an outreach coordinator. So I wanted to detail our career development opportunities here. A little bit by myself, I worked full time of the war on this remote here. I am an electrical engineer by trade, but during my time at LSU, I served in the United States Marine Corps of Reserve. So I am very ecstatic to be here to deliver this presentation. I will be going over the electro property basics and I believe I might become under resource section, but since time is limited, I want to pass it over to Carmen and Sean so that he can also introduce himself as Carmen. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Carmen Lyles-Ervin. I am also an outreach coordinator supporting Rinalda out of the Texas Regional Office. While I am not in support of outreach, I am a patent examiner in TC-20, excuse me, in TC-1700, which is chemical materials where I examine fuel cells and batteries as a patent examiner. I've been here a little over 10 years and I am outside of the Atlanta Metro area. Thanks to everyone for their service. And good to be here today. Michonne? Good afternoon. My name is Michonne Hunter. I also am a detailee with the Texas Regional Office. Outside of that, I'm also a primary patent examiner in 2484, which is video recording and reproduction. I have been with the Patent Office for about 17 years now. And also, thank you for your service and thank you for having us today. Okay, let's go ahead and get started with the presentation. Chris, can you pull it up? There we go. So we are the US Patent and Trademark Office. Today, we'll be talking about intellectual basic, intellectual property basics to give you an overview of what intellectual property is, what the USPTO does and some of the resources that we can provide. Next slide, please. So the functions of the USPTO are really our role of the USPTO is to grant patents for protection of inventions and to register trademarks. So we typically will work with, specifically, patents and trademark registrations. But we also do foster and promote the industrial and technological progress of the nation and strains the economy. So we do look to foster innovation, create atmospheres of education and IP, because we do believe if people do get educated on intellectual property, they tend to use it more. And not only protect it, but be aware of what it is. So we do disseminate the information education and then we develop and sharing of new technologies worldwide. One of the other common factors that we do and a lot of people don't know is that our director advises the president of the United States. So she is politically appointed, but for any IP matters, our director is the IP council per se for the United States president. So which is good to see, but not only on patents and trademarks, but also other intellectual property aspects that we'll talk about today. Next slide, please. So the USPTO is mainly focused on patents and a lot of it is because of the quantity that it takes to do. So to give you an overall picture, we have about 13,000 employees that are patent examiners and about 8,500 of them are patent examiners. So it gives you an idea of how much focus we put on patents as you saw right now, Chris, Michonne, and Carmen all patent examiners in different technology centers. And a lot of it is because we wanna get subject matter experts to be able to understand the technology and the field that you're in. We also do have the trademark examining attorneys, which are trademark attorneys by trade. And we do also have administrative patent judges and trademark judges to be able to handle any of the process with patents and trademark appeals. So it's good for you to understand how the USPTO works and some of our personnel. Just to give you an overview of fiscal year 22 numbers, 646,000 applications were filed last year and 361,435 patents were issued. That gives you an idea of the workflow that we get every year just to give you an idea of the overall situation. We continue to increase on patent and trademark applications which is a good sign for the economy because we continue to foster innovation. We continue to see small business inventors, even large corporations foster innovation to protect their intellectual property. For trademarks, we do get a little bit more applications about 787,000 and 453,000 certificates of registration were issued last year. It kind of gives you a good workflow of USPTO, the employees and what kind of patents and trademark applications we see every year. Down here, we do see the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Thanks to, you can go on to the next slide, but thanks to the Americans and Vensag, we have been able to expand throughout the nation. So our office is the Texas regional office, but we do have other regional offices around the nation that cover their respective states. So we have the West Coast region, which is also known as the Silicon Valley regional office. We have the Rocky Mountain region office, which is in Denver, Colorado, Texas region office, which is ours, which we're based out of Dallas. The Midwest regional office is based out of Detroit and then we still have the East Coast regional office, which is in conjunction with headquarters. The West Coast region office is actually in San Jose, California. So just to let you know, we were more accessible to you guys, we're able to work with our stakeholders a lot closer and educate our public a lot better thanks to the regional offices in the Americans and Vensag. You go on to the next slide, Chris. Just to highlight a little bit of the Texas region office and a lot of the region offices have similar structure. You know, we do have public search facilities for you guys in case you wanted to come in and use some of the public search tools that we have, we'll talk later. Most of them have gone online, which is a little bit easier for individuals to use, but there's always the option for you to come into the office and be able to get technical assistance here. We have examiner interview rooms in case you wanted to use them as well, here in rooms that you can participate if PTAB or TTAB is having any hearings and public meeting space as well. So it's good for you to understand how the regional offices work and what we are and what we can provide. So next slide, please. I'm gonna talk briefly of IP and the US economy and how it connects and the power the intellectual property has really. So throughout history, we've seen the US patents grow. You know, our first patent was in 1836. Now we're up to 11 million patents, which is great to see. And you can see the increase in generations and really we continue to increase even now. Like I mentioned before, people are understanding intellectual property more and therefore they're able to understand it and protect it and see the value on it. If you go on to the next slide, you can see some of the numbers through the economy there we go. So IP intensive jobs are about 47 million in the industry itself. 41% of IP industry share a total US GDP of 41%. You're looking at the value of IP and intensive industries is about 7.8 trillion. I do see that you do see here that if you are in IP industries, intensive industries, you also do get paid higher. The wages for workers are 60% higher. So you get about 1,517 a week in dollar value. So and we also do have revenues on licensing rights of about 100, 115.2 billion. So it gives you an aspect of, you know, how strong the IP intensive industries are thanks to the intellectual property and some of the options on licensing as well because you also do have 28 industries driving revenues from licensing alone. So these are statistics that we provide through economic reports that you can find on our website. You can also reach out to us, but we're pretty transparent. We have accountability reports and economic reports that we do yearly just to show the public, you know, what we're doing employees-wise, and even how it's affecting the economy because ultimately we want the youth economy to foster innovation and to create, you know, better jobs, better stability and really be in the forefront for the world and intellectual property. You go on to the next slide. So this kind of showed you some of the benefits of having a patent, you know, startup companies that have a patent are far more likely to be successful in raising funds for new product development and expansion of products of production than those that have not secured intellectual property protection. When used as collateral, a patent increases venture capital funding by 76% over three years and increases funding from IPO by 128%. The approval of the startup's first patent application increases its employee growth by 36% over the next five years. After five years, a new company with a patent increase itself by a cumulative of 80% more than the companies that do not have a patent. You can see the benefits, you know, patents bring in. This is what we talk about IP portfolios. Individuals are able to use those patents and trademarks to expand and venture capital funding and have more probabilities of success. We also do have more statistics that we can share, but just to give you an overview of what a patent can do for your company. So next slide, please, Chris. So from here on, I'll pass it over to Chris. Chris will be talking about intellectual property and the four buckets of IP. But feel free to ask questions, you know, throughout the presentation. You have myself, Sean and Carmen monitoring the chat box. So any questions you may have, feel free to put them in there and we'll make sure to respond to them. Chris. Thank you, Rick. As I said earlier, my name is Chris Harris. I will be going over the intellectual property. Portions of this presentation will be covered in patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secret, what is intellectual property, as well as resources that the USPTO provides. This will be a lot of material to cover in a 30 minute time span. So please use a Q&A feature. You will get a copy of the presentation. So if something hasn't been highlighted, you will be able to, you know, go back to it once you get the chance. So jumping right into it. So intellectual property, what is intellectual property? Intellectual property, you know, you can break it down into two words, right? IP, you can consider it as an asset. So on the left side of the slide, you see three images of ideas, thinking, you know, innovation. So that's what intellectual is, you know, creations in the mind. And you have property on the right and you see, you know, a home for sale, a car. So things that you can do with cars, homes, you can lease them, you can sell them, maybe license on them. You can do the same thing with intellectual property. So intellectual property, when put together, combines to form creations of the mind that may be protected by certain intangible rights. So the next slide goes over the four different types of intellectual property. The first two patents, a trademark, that's the bread and butter USPTO. The USPTO, we grant patents and register trademarks. The next two categories are copyrights and trade secrets. The next slide is a great representation of thinking what exactly is intellectual property. So many of you are probably looking at the stream through maybe your phone, maybe a laptop, but intellectual property is all around us. So this example shows the image of the Samsung Galaxy Note. And looking at this device, you can see that there's stylus. The stylus has Samsung trademarks written on it as well as on the phone. You have the screen that's covered with semiconductor within phone, battery, camera. These are all patents. The manual that comes with the device or the ringtones that are installed on the device. Well, those are protected by copyrights. The shape of the stylus, the shape of the phone, those are designed patents. In terms of trade secrets, question marks represent the secret being a secret. So to maintain a trade secret, it has to be unknown from the public. Moving to the next slide, we're gonna jump right into US patents. So what is a patent? A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions of what a patent is it, but the slide shows five bullet points. A patent is going to be something that's granted by the US government to the better. It's going to be granted for a limited time, usually 20 years, or 15 depending on the type of patent. You receive this as long as you exchange public disclosure of your invention. It's territorial, meaning that receiving a patent in the United States only protects you within the United States. If you want protection in other foreign countries, you will have to file with those offices. And then in general, it's a new way of doing something or offer a new solution to a problem. So the interesting thing is, especially with today's class, being came towards veterans, there's actually three inventors that prior Navy that were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, such as Lewis Latimer. He invented evaporated air condition as well as improving a process from manufacturing of carbon filaments and light bulbs. So that allowed for affordable and safe incandescent lighting that was brought to the world. He also improved toilet systems for railroad cars. You have Frank Sprague, who contributed to the development of like the electric motor, electric railways, electric elevators, as well as Lloyd Conover, who was the inventor of tetrasilin, which was the oral antibiotic. And it was the first antibiotic that was made by community modifying a naturally produced drug. I say that to say, you as an inventor, you don't know what contributions you can make to the world. So a great example of this is, you see the image in the top right hand corner of a man sitting in a chair with a rod in his hand to control his television. Well, a patent was issued for a TV control device, but we know that this is not the first we want control. The companies in it developed this in 1956 using ultrasound or sound waves to control the channels by putting these waves above the range of human hearing. But since infrared technology wasn't developed, a solution to a common problem had to be created. So with the TV control device, the objective of it was that it provided a device of simple structure, which was inexpensive to manufacture. It utilized and it was utilized with facility and convenience. And it was less expensive than its electrical and electronic counterparts. And it functions very efficiently, effectively and reliably because it selectively rotated the dials on a television from an area distance from set. So the real key thing about this is the inventor, Chris Michael, he provided a solution to a problem. Even though it wasn't something new, he offered the new way of solving it. And that new way was not patented or it was not developed and he received the patent. Obviously, since the 70s, infrared technology has become a mainstream item as well as new wireless technologies for controlling devices. But you should not be dejected from pursuing opportunity for an invention because it may not be considered a brand new way of doing something. So the next slide talks about the formal definition of a patent. And as we can read from the slide, it's essentially a grant of property rights for you as an inventor that excludes others from making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing the invention in the US. So a big misconception is people think that when you receive a patent, it's a right for you to do this. But no, it's not. It's a right to exclude others from doing it. So moving to the next slide, we're gonna go over the different types of patents. So the most common patent that's filed with the USPTO is the utility patent. So the utility patent is it can be granted to anyone who events or discovers any new or useful process, machine article manufacture or any new useful improvement thereof. So it granted 20 years from the date of filing and it covers, as I stated on the slide, processes, machines, article manufacture and composition. So these would be like maybe a new method of doing something, maybe the device, the Samsung device that we discuss will be a machine, article manufacture could be a candlestick or a drum, something that's created through artificial means, as well as the composition of matter, the antibiotic that I discussed earlier. So the interesting thing about this is you can see from the slide that there is an image of a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was actually the first president to receive a patent for a device that was manufactured. Excuse me. He was the first president to receive a patent for a device to lift multiple shows, but he never manufactured it. So just because you have an idea, you can receive a patent, but you do not necessarily need to manufacture that idea. The next slide discloses design patents and these protect the ornamental appearance for an article. These can, this can be like the shape and configuration, you know, our search on mutation applied to it. Fonts could be considered design patents. You can see the example of the shape and color bottle, but it, as I said, it protects the way a product looks, but the difference, the key difference is, it's 15 years from the date of grant is the protection that you receive versus 20 years from the date of file is the protection you receive for a utility patent. And the last patent, not as common as the plant patent. So it protects newly invented strains of sexually reproducing flowering plants, for example, or fruit trees, but it's provided 20 years from the file date. So it's not as common. I mean, you can see from this image, this was a plant patent that was issued in 1953, but it's plant patent number 1200 and seven. So not as common, but a common thing that a lot of people will love to know is, hey, I have an idea. You know, how do I transform that idea into a patent? So, typically, if you have an innovative idea, you want to search this idea. And the best way to do a search is you can use Google patents, you can use the new search tool that we have. It's, we will actually go over it towards the end of the presentation, but you want to do an internet search to make sure that your idea is actually something that's new, novel, or improved. So once you do the search and you say, hey, I may actually have something, then you're able to file, this is optional, a provisional application. The provisional application is like a placeholder. As I said earlier, to file the utility patent, which would be the non-provisional portion of it, it's granted 20 years from the data file. So provisional application is not really called saving, it's cost delaying, but it gives you the opportunity to really search that idea, work on your product, you can pitch it to inventors or investors, I'm sorry, like as you see in charting, you can also use the word patent pending, but it doesn't trigger any statutory bars that will result in losing your patent rights. So once that provisional application is your pass and you determine, hey, I may have something, then you will file a non-provisional application, the non-provisional application is submitted to the USPTO. After about 18 months, give or take, it'll be filed to the docket of exam such as myself, and then it will review the application and will determine whether or not, this is something that can be patented or if there aren't any other things that can be rejected or rejected to it. But through negotiation with your attorney, a patent is resulted from this non-provisional application and then once you have it, you have 20 years of protection from the data filing, which will allow you to enforce it and protect your intellectual property rights regarding your patent. So that covers the pathway to a patent. I'm gonna pause briefly, actually no, I'm sorry, we're taking questions at the end so I'm gonna jump right into trademarks. So trademarks, what is a trademark? So if we read this slide together, we can see a trademark is a word phrase, combination of words, phrases, symbols, or designs that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of the party from those of others. And a service mark is actually the same thing as a trademark, except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than the product. So trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services. You under a clear different mark. So some examples of trademarks are words, they can be designs. I'm not sure how many of you keep up with the latest legal news, but there was a fringer who utilized what can be considered a trademark of Nike to try and design a shoe. And they're being assumed another famous case that's going on involves the Birkin bags and the Meta Birkin and whether or not it's the the the infringer has a right to utilize that. But those products, you know, that's what trademark protection provides you. It allows you to protect your brand and then distinguish your brand from those of the other who tries to imitate or make use of it. So some other common trademarks or well, actually not as common or maybe not traditional. Better word to say, can be colors. So you have Tiffany blue, UPS brown, John Deere green as well as sense, Verizon and Play-Doh, even sounds. The Pillsbury Dove boy, MVC, the Mario coin, Moshe is actually covered under non-traditional marks. So the finger pushing towards the Pillsbury Dove boy or the Lamborghini doors, the way they open. Are considered days that could be trademark. And then you have a trade dress. So trade dresses, they are a type of trademark that refers to the design or packaging of a product. It is intended to protect the consumer from packaging or appearances of products that are designed to imitate other products. But the trade dress must be distinctive. So that means that the consumer who receives a particular trade dress, as identifying a source of product, has to be like, so for example, you see the Doc Martin boots, we all know it has your stitching, well, two-tone blue sole edge, black fabric heel, Coca-Cola, the bobble shape, the interior design of an Apple store. All Apple stores look the same. I actually went to a conference a month ago, a few months ago and for their booth, they set it up identical to an Apple store, as well as the Hershey kiss. The shape of the kiss, the way the flag comes out of the candy, are great examples of different trade dresses. But what's most important is, yeah, hey, I now know what a trademark is, but how do I know what's a strong trademark? The next slide, it gives some examples of those strong trademarks. So a strong trademark is important to have it because it's inherently distinctive. It means your trademarking quickly and clearly identify you as the source of your goods and services. So the strongest mark are fanciful words or inventive words. You can see that Xerox, so it's a word that was created. It actually took on a second meaning to mean copy. You have Microsoft, Microsoft associated with computers and software, Cisco, but another acceptable trademark are arbitrary words. So arbitrary words are actual words that have no association with the underlying goods or services. So think of the term Apple, as we see. If an Apple orchard tries to receive the word, tries to register the word Apple as a trademark, for the types of apples they grow, that trademark wouldn't be registerable, but Apple has to register as a trademark for computers. Apple computers is unique. Some other suggestions are gap as well as Blackberry. And then you have the suggested trademarks. And these are words that suggest some quality of goods or services, but they don't state that quality of goods or service outright. So consider quality of the goods, consider copper tone, for example, for suntan products. The trademark gives the impression that using copper tone suntan oil will make your skin shimmery like copper. Dry foot, it'll dry your feet, as well as ever ready for batteries. It will keep your batteries charged for as long as you want. But while I gave you great examples of what are strong marks, it will also help if I gave you some examples of what are unacceptable or weak trademarks. So weak trademarks are hard to protect against competitors and are often not federally registerable. These include descriptive and generic marks. So a descriptive mark, they merely describe some aspect of your goods or services without identifying or distinguishing them. So some examples of those trademarks will be creamy for yogurt, apple potter for pottery and then breakfast or extra for lodging or reservations. And then you have as well as generic trademarks, which just, they aren't trademarks. They are just merely common, everyday names for you with the services. So like in the first example, the apple orchard who try to register a trademark for apple, well, that's literally the common name for their products. So when competitors as well as consumers will not be able to distinguish, we're talking about the product or we're talking about the actual business. So that goes over trademarks. I'm going to push right along to copyrights. And the one good thing, key thing is we at the USPTO, we do not deal with copyrights in great detail, but we do advise people on copyrights. So from a slide, we can see that copyrights is a form of protection provided by laws of the United States to the authors of original works. Authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, certain other intellectuals. So basically pen to paper, it's probably copyright one. So it's a copyright, it's a bundle of rights that gives the owner the right to make copies, prepare derivatives, distribute copies, perform the work publicly and display the work publicly. So things that are protected by copyrights are songs, books, sculptures, movies, as well as works that are protected by copyrights, logos, product design and packaging, advertising, promotional materials, software, socials. So a key thing to note is that you should be seeing a pattern. There is some crossover between the different types of intellectual property. So logo can be copyrighted and serve as a trademark. You can also get a design pattern for it. Methods of processes executed by software crew may be patent protected while the actual source code is copyrighted. So a cool thing about copyrights too is it provides amongst protection. It's seven years plus the life of the author versus the patents, which are 20 years from holiday or 15 years from a grand date or trademarks, which are 10 years, but then you can renew them. So that concludes copyrights. We're going to jump right into trade secrets. Excuse me. Sorry about that. So what is a trade secret? A trade secret consists of information that can include a formula, pattern, compilation of program, device, method, technique or process. So to me, the most common definition of a trade secret, that information must be used in business. Give an opportunity to obtain some economic manage over competitors who do not know or use it. Excuse me. So some examples of trade secrets are common things that we either consume or we use. So Coca-Cola, that's a classic formula for Coke. Krispy Kreme, there's a secret yeast-raising recipe that a French chef from New Orleans created in 1937. KFC, the 11 herbs and spices, is a trade secret. In fact, even the head chef at KFC claims that he doesn't know what it is. And then Google, it uses like a hybrid intellectual property protection algorithm. So the way their Google page rate is, excuse me. Google combats manipulation of its page rate algorithm by link forms, others who's a closely held trade secret, but their actual page rate algorithm is considered patent protected. So if we see for the next slide, we can see that patents and trade secrets are really two different sides of the same coin. With patents, you have a duty disclose where it's a trade secret, you have to keep your secret. Patent, you receive rights, but it's only for limited time. A trade secret lasts as long as it remains a secret. There may be legal remedies that someone's still your trade secret, but there may be legal remedies that someone may use to sell your invention without your permission. A trade secret can be reversed engineered, whereas a patent can be approved upon in such a manner to distinguish it from the invention that may be patentable. But as I said earlier, the first remote control device has gone over many raditions from the 50s until now. The last slide gives a nice overview of what we just discussed. It's a quick reference guide that you can utilize. And if you had a question in terms of what protection do I receive for these various intellectual property rights? What are the requirements? What is it protected against? And how long we endure this for? So with that being said, that's the intellectual property aspects of it. USPTO resources will be discussed. Ray, do you want me to go over this, or do you want me to transition back to you? Ray might be scrambling for his mute button right now. There we go. Double mute here, right there. I can be a reliever there for you, Chris. No worries. All right, thank you. And I'm sorry by going about this quickly. We just want to make sure we have enough time for questions at the end. Yeah, and there's some good questions on the chat there. I think you can elaborate more on shortly after the resources. Next slide, please. So we do have a lot of resources here at USPTO. And we want to make you aware. One of the things that we do recommend and a big resource is our website. We put everything in our website that we have. We try to be transparent to the public. I do recommend for you guys to subscribe to our newsletters. We send out the trainings that are coming up throughout the year. Any changes in IP, law, or changes within USPTO, we send out. So just a way for you to stay informative. We do have the regional office that are breaking down through areas. But we also do have our headquarters and our COMS team that promotes nationally. But that is something I definitely do recommend. So next slide, please. This is one of the tools that I was talking about earlier. We do have a patent public search tool now that's online. It's a lot easier before you had to go to certain locations like PTRCs and the offices, the region offices to use this. And this new web-based patent search application is pretty much what the patent examiners are using. That gives you a good idea of how to do patent searches. So I would say it's not the easiest thing to do. There is a trick to it. We do have trainings for that. And we can assist you and give you technical assistance. But the resources and the tools are becoming more accessible to the public, which I think is a great thing for inventors and small businesses, companies to use as well. Next slide, please. One of the popular trainings that we have throughout the year, we have this quarterly. We have a module. So it's called Path to a Patent. And we go over the process of how to get a patent. It's not the easiest thing in the world. I would say it's like 1% or 2% of the patent applications that get issued are actually pro se individuals that represent themselves. Most of them are done through professionals. But we do teach you the process so you can learn. And even if you have IP counsel, you're able to assist them more because you understand the process itself. But the Path to a Patent is one of the most popular programs that we have. And we do have it quarterly. So I do recommend if you want to learn the process to take the course itself, the training that we do. And it's webinar-based, so you can do it at the leisure of your time. We do share the recordings for the most part. Sometimes we don't, just because of bandwidth. But it's definitely a good program for you to learn how to do the path. Next slide, please. And we do have an Inventors Assistance Center. This is a 1-800 hotline dedicated for patent assistance. So anything that you may have questions for fighting the application, the process, feel free to give the Assistance Center a call and they can guide you as best as possible. One of the key things to remember is that we are USPTO, we're a government agency. But we can't give legal advice. That's one of the primary things that distinguishes us from the private sector. We can guide you and educate you and assist you as best as we can. But we have to draw the limit at legal advice. So just keep that into consideration when you're calling us or reaching out to us. We'll guide you, we'll help you do informative decisions. But legal assistance is something that we cannot do. Next slide, please, Chris. We do have patent fees in our website that you can look into. I don't think I mentioned it in the beginning, but USPTO is a fee-based agency. What that means is that we operate based off the fees that we collect from trademarks and patents. So we don't receive taxpayer funding. We still do have to report to Congress and ask for spending and all that. But it's just the structure of the agency is a little bit different than other agencies. But we do provide an incentive for micro-businesses which are usually 500 employees or less. We do provide incentives if you file electronically. So it is something for you guys to consider for micro-entities, which are gonna be small businesses. If you're filing something, it's the big incentive for you to have. And this is one of the questions that came into the chat. Individuals asking for the IP fees, if it's kind of costly. That's typically where the fees are gonna be or the costs are gonna be when you're going after a patent or trademark. And not necessarily USPTO fees are pretty standard, but the legal fees for an IP attorney to actually draft your application, it can be pretty costly. So it really depends on what it is, on the subject, how complex it is, because they do have to make a case for the patent itself. But just take that into consideration. It's not something that we control at USPTO. It's in the private sector. And that can be costly, but I'll talk about some resources here shortly that you can hopefully use to help you leverage those costs. So next slide, please. So we do have an option for prioritizing patent examination. So that is what we call track one. It is an option for individuals to reduce the time of application to receive and get your issued. So it is something that you can get within 12 months. So it's really good option, but you do have to pay for it. It's kind of like a Disney fast pass, per se. And you just want to let you know that that option is there. Next slide, please. So we do have a patent ombuds office, which helps you with any issues that you may have through the patent process, in case there's anything being installed, any issues with the patent examiners. Just know that there is an ombuds office to help you and serve at the third party in case there's any specific issues. You can see the email and the phone numbers there. And like I said, we'll share these slides for you guys to have in reference. And of course, you can find everything within our website as well. So next slide, please. We do have a patent pro bono, a PTAB pro bono program. And this is to help resource inventors to provide legal assistance preparing an ex parte appeal to the PTAB. So the requirements are listed here, but this is a great program that we were able to develop last fiscal year to help individuals at the enforcement side. It is something that is new and you do have to qualify based on the house, the income requirement, the micro entity status, the filing date, and take some trainings online. But it's a great resource because individuals, we kept on seeing feedback that this is something that was needed to help individuals with PTABs and appeals. So keep this into consideration in case you have an issue, something that can assist you later on in the patent process. Next slide. So talking about the pro bono program, this is our biggest pro bono service that we have. USPTO certifies organizations around the nation to help you with legal assistance preparing the patent applications. So these are nationwide. So we do have coverage around the nation and all US states and territories. You can find this in our website. You can also email the pro bono program itself. But if you go on to the next slide, here in the, actually go back one more, yeah, sorry. Just keep in mind, every state and territory has their pro bono program. So just, you can contact them, get on their list and see if they can assist you with your idea or invention. It does require income, requirements, and the knowledge of the invention needs to be pre-screen. It can be just, it has to be something feasible. It can't just be an idea. So keep those into consideration. But I mean, if you're able to qualify for the patent pro bono program, I would definitely do it because it helps you tremendously with the legal fees. Next slide, please. So we do have our trademarks team that provides a lot of trademarks trainings throughout the year. Trademarks are a little bit more feasible for small businesses and inventors and entrepreneurs because it's easier to understand. One of the popular trainings that they're coming up is December 13th, they'll be doing a webinar talking about the registrations involving NFTs, blockchain and cryptocurrency. So very much virtual goods. So this is a good popular program that I wanted to highlight for you guys. Next slide, please. The most popular program within the USPTO, it has to be the trademark basic boot camps. And this one's very similar to the PantoPan, but it goes over on the trademark process itself. This is something that you definitely wanna look into, especially if you wanna protect your name, your brand, your logo. And as Chris talked about the, what the non-traditional trademarks are, in case you're looking into those unique selling propositions. Next slide. We do have a trademark assistance center, which is also a 1-800 hotline, and it's manned through trademark examiners. So very helpful for any questions you may have on trademarks itself and in the process. Just keep in mind, we can't give legal advice. Next slide. And then we do recommend you create a USPTO account to help you access not only your files and status, but also links to the application, responses, any change of addresses that you may need. Next slide. The good way to keep track of your docket. We do have a trademark app as well, it makes it a little bit more convenient for individuals, especially for trademarks, there's different categories. So it gives you the ability to be able to track it a lot better. Next slide. We do have a website dedicated for startup resources, which is more for small businesses than only do we give you information with FBA and NBDA and FBDCs, which are organizations that we work with, the FBA being the US Mob Business Administration, but also things to consider and help you plan for IP success, IP rights to funding and engaging with experts in your community. Next slide. We do have an IP awareness assessment tool and this assessment tool is a questionnaire that helps you understand your intellectual property. You go through the tool, it's about 10, 15 minutes, you answer the questions, and it can help you get a better understanding of intellectual property and which type of buckets you actually hit in your situation. Next slide. A lot of business advisors use this tool for their clients. We do have PTRCs, the Pan and Trademark Resource Centers, which are trained librarians in the community to help you do patent and trademark searches. Trademark searches are a little bit easier, but especially the patents, they can be a little bit more complicated. So we do train these local community librarians to help you and assist these intellectual property needs throughout the nation, but just keep those into consideration. I know this public is nationwide, so PTRCs are very helpful. And usually step one, kind of like you're doing a business plan, you wanna make sure that your patent and your prior art is there. And if your idea is already patent, it's probably not worth pursuing, but there's always the option of approve upon. So those, typically most patents are approve upon patents. So next slide, please. Lastly, I'll talk about law schools. There's another pro bono service that we provide. We have over 60 clinics around the nation that provide legal services for pro bono assistance to entrepreneurs, small businesses. They do follow the income requirements, such as the pro bono one, but they can differ in every state. So keep those, keep these in mind. They have clinics for patents and trademarks, and these are pretty much law school students under supervision of a clinic supervisor with IP background that can help you with the drafting process of a trademark and a ban. So very good pro bono assistance that we try to provide and expand through the nation. Next slide. And this is our information. Feel free to reach out to us, especially with intellectual property. You may not want to disclose it in a public setting. So we're always open to one-on-ones. We can bring in subject matter experts and trademarks, patents, and even some copyrights to assist you in your questions and inquiries. Is there any questions that we want to bring up? I think we do. I think we do have some questions. Chad Lasek had a question. It seemed a little bit more involved. A lot of the other ones were answered in chat. Chad, do you want to come on? My pleasure, but it won't let me start my video. I don't know if that's important or not. You don't really need to... Oh, there we go. There we go, Chad. That's a great view. Now we know you're not a robot. That's right. So good afternoon. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question. So my question is regarding patent specificity. You used it as an example earlier, the mobile phone and all the little aspects of the mobile phone were patented, but the mobile phone itself wasn't. And so I'm sure there's companies that would love to have a patent on the mobile phone or the automobile, as a big, huge blanket to create a monopoly, but that doesn't exist. I've run into some patents in areas that I'm currently searching that seem to be that broad. They're literally, they use language like anything, everything made out of anything. They're these huge, broad, blanket kind of patents that seem to be really prohibitive, but I don't think are legitimate. I don't know, just like we can't patent the automobile. So can you speak a little bit about how that works in terms of how specific it needs to be to be considered a unique product when there are similar patents, especially if there's really broad patents like that that are out there? Yeah, no problem. So when you look at a patent application, the name of the game is the claims. So the specification, it may encompass many varieties of what the invention can do or many ways to use it, but the claims actually specify the boundaries of that invention. So when you, if you do a patent search and you wanna know whether or not you're infringing on something, you need to look at the claims. So the claims, and then in terms of the claims, you're only able to receive one invention per application. So an invention can I have while it can disclose multiple, I guess different inventions in the specification, the claims themselves can only specify one. If there was ever an application that was submitted that maybe there was a claims directed towards the radio within a car, but then there was claims directed towards controlling the speed of the car. Well, those are two different inventions and we'll have to be restricted out. But that's a little, I guess a different level than with the courses covering in terms of awareness, but it's, I guess something good to know. So what exactly that assignee or that organization has for that actual patent? That's a great, great one. Here's a question for you. What if you've done, you've gone through this process and you feel like someone's violated your intellectual property, what are your options? What's your recourse, do you have any recommendations on that? I think I might transition it to Carmen because Carmen is the attorney on the team, but the USPTO, we do not handle the enforcement of patents. We only handle the issuance, but Carmen does have some, I think, perspective from an attorney outside of USPTO. So I'm gonna transition to her. Can everyone hear me? Okay, perfect. So as Chris was saying, here at the PTO, we are more about the granting of issuance of the patents. But if by chance, Dan, and everyone else on the call, that someone has a patent to issue, and from that point, if that is infringed upon, then what happens at that point? It's advantageous at that point for you to, for instance, go and seek, probably more likely than not seek the counsel of an attorney where they can help you with what's called an interference. And then if someone, well, number one, you probably want to send a cease and desist letter, right? And that's then notifying that party that's infringing upon your invention, i.e. your patent to say FYI, this is my invention. It's protected by this particular patent, and therefore please discontinue infringing upon my patent. And oftentimes that helps. If it does not, then you may have to move forward and have someone who comes in to sue that person in order to get them to discontinue your patent. Now mind you, I'm not a litigator, so this is, so I know about it, but it's definitely not something that I have done, but I've helped assist it with the litigation part of the process. But that's generally what you would do is then seek patent protection and then sue someone who has infringed upon your patent. If that helps answer the question. Absolutely, and one of the things that's kind of going on in the chat, not everyone on the social network sees the chat in Zoom. If you want to, sign up at patreonboocamp.org to get on that list. But one of the comments that seems universal is protect yourself with patents, protect yourself with trademarks, but also seems like the onus is on you to protect your own security, protect your information before it's patented, right? I would say so. I think it's smart to be very proactive in trying to protect your intellectual property. Again, as you were saying, in order to protect an invention, the best way to do so is to file and seek patent protection in order to protect. And again, I got to be very careful here how I answer the question because I don't want to give legal advice. I am, again, a registered patent attorney, but I know the PTO in these presentations want to share as much as we can without going into the purview of providing legal advice. But again, when you are seeking trademark protection, you have to worry about, for instance, whether you've used or not used your mark. But, and then again, there's ways to do that. So the best thing to do is to make certain that you're seeking out the protection that you need, whether it be patent protection, trademark protection, and or copyright protection. And you do that by filing each of the respective offices. I hope that's a sufficient answer to that question, but not being too vague. I'm forcing you to walk the line. And the other thing I want to elaborate on is also trade secrets are very important as well and very relatable to small businesses and entrepreneurs. And those are just different tools that you can use with the legal system to protect ideas. Because you have your NDAs, confidentiality agreements, exit clauses, non-compete. So just keep those into consideration as tools. And this is where it helps to have an IP attorney understand it because if you're a restaurant, per se, in like the KFC, it just, that's your trade secret, your recipe. So you have to find ways to be able to protect that. And that's not necessarily going to be a patent. I want to take, there's a couple of questions that came in that are super relevant and super great. One is from Roy and he's saying, okay, what if you're doing business internationally? What do you have to do to protect yourself at that stage? I can take that one. So USPTO and IP is territorial. If you want it to get IP protection in another country, you have to go with their IP office. So Mexico has their IP, China has their own IP office. And you kind of have to understand the laws and regulations and the way each country works. But just take that into consideration, IP is territorial. So we could only enforce and cover USPTO and territories. And a product to be marketed back into the US that it was, did not, we did not hold a patent in another country, but we exported to that country. And maybe that's more of an enforcement question. It's not relevant, but if our design and our IP was ripped off by a foreign country and been marketed here with their belegal recourse. We do have IP at the Shays, which is a resource here at USPTO. They serve in US embassies around the world as resource partners. So we have three in China just because China is a big market and we have a lot of issues. So if it's something we can connect you with them as well to see what legal resources they can provide or assistance, because they know the country's a lot better than we do. But we do have that specific resource here within USPTO. Glad to connect you with those, Roy. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. We're running out of time here. I do wanna thank the team at USPTO for a great presentation, important information. Carmen, Michonne, Ronaldo, Christopher, you were fantastic. You represented the organization very well. And thank you for the way you serve our country and entrepreneurs. I wanna set a quick reminder. Applications are still being accepted for DAV Patriot Bootcamp Winter 23. That's gonna be here near Cincinnati at DAV National Headquarters, February 8th through 11. You can register at patriotbootcamp.org. The application deadline, however, is tomorrow. Fortunately for procrastinators, it's not a painful process to sign up so you can do that at patriotbootcamp.org. You can also sign up for notifications so you can get in the Zoom chat with patriotbootcamp.patriotbootcamp.org. And thank you all. If you're looking for help, resources, or great charity to support for your end giving, visit DAV.org. Thank you, USPTO, and thank all of you for tuning in. God bless you.