There’s Help for Intellectual Property Newcomers
Whether a debate over intellectual property (IP) rights in the development of vaccines or news of Bob Dylan selling his music publishing catalogue, the value and impacts of IP have never been more in the public consciousness.
The USPTO has a section at the top of its homepage for IP newcomers that provides links regarding patent and trademark basics, inventor and entrepreneur resources, USPTO locations, and more. Go to uspto.gov.
Share with IP Champions: The USPTO recently launched the Community Outreach Campaign: Intellectual Property Champions. This program connects USPTO employees—trained in providing IP awareness and educational resources to diverse audiences—with high schools and community centers.
USPTO IP Champions educate communities on the importance of IP protections such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets to innovation. They support local educators and are available to discuss important IP concepts, share our free online resources, and empower the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.
If you’re interested in bringing the expertise of IP Champions to your community, email CommunityOutreachCampaign@USPTO.gov.
To learn more about the IP Champions program and additional educational opportunities for you and your community, go to uspto.gov/initiatives/ci2/ip-champions.
Utilize data on diversity: The Diversity Information Platform (DI Platform), a new effort to advance diversity and inclusion efforts throughout the innovation landscape, provides a no-cost tool for data-driven analyses and a one-stop shop for discussing and sharing best practices.
The unique online platform is free and available to anyone with an internet connection. It offers several novel features that include visual representations of the demographic makeup of U.S. states and industries from 2014 through 2021; a tool for any organization to benchmark its demographic data against its own industry sector (over 100 U.S. industries included); a discussion forum for sharing best practices for increasing participation in the innovation ecosystem; and, for the first time, a set of visualizations that show the demographic makeup of the USPTO workforce by geography and occupation.
The DI Platform is built on public data available from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, and the USPTO. All visualizations and data on the DI Platform are downloadable and usable without restrictions for creating presentations or using the data directly in other applications or software.
For more information, visit uspto.gov/initiatives/equity/ci2 and developer.uspto.gov/diversity-data/home.