The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or USPTO) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that provides patent and trademark protection to inventors and businesses for their inventions and corporate and product identification.
The PTO, currently based in the Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia, will complete a move to consolidated offices in Alexandria, Virginia by 2005.
Since 1991, the office has been fully funded by fees charged for processing patents and trademarks.
Each year, the PTO issues thousands of patents to companies and individuals all around the world. As of August 2004, the PTO has issued nearly seven million patents.
The X-Patents (the first 10,000 issued between 1790 and 1836) were destroyed by a fire; less than 3,000 of those have been recovered and re-issued with numbers ending in "X" to distinguish them from those issued after the fire.
The U.S. Department of Commerces U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on November 15, 2007, released record breaking year-end numbers that reveal historic improvement in the quality of patent and trademark reviews and subsequently the quality of issued patents and registered trademarks.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a final rule notice in the Federal Register to revise the rules of practice in patent cases relating to continuing applications and requests for continued examination practices, and for the examination of claims in patent applications.
USPTO employees are to continue processing and examining patent applications under the rules and procedures in effect on October 31, 2007, until further notice.
The USPatent and Trademark Office is mostly located in the Crystal Plaza and Crystal Park office complexes.
The USPatent and Trademark Office Public Search Room, the Scientific Library, and the majority of examiners are in Crystal Plaza buildings 2, 3, 4, and 3-4.
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