By Kevin E. Noonan --
Under Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Jon Dudas (at right) announced today two changes in Patent Office management, occasioned by the early departure of Margaret Peterlin, Deputy under Secretary of Commerce and Deputy PTO Director (see "Deputy Director Peterlin Announces Resignation") on her leaving. This announcement came in the form of the following letter to PTO personnel from Director Dudas:
Dear USPTO Colleagues:
I want you to be the first to know about the following assignments, occasioned by Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director Margaret Peterlin's departure from the agency.
To fulfill the functions and duties of the Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director, I have asked John Doll, Commissioner for Patents, to serve as the Acting Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director of the USPTO. John's leadership will ensure that the critical work of the Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director continues in an uninterrupted fashion.
John has been with the USPTO for more than 34 years, serving the agency in a variety of capacities, including patent examiner, supervisory patent examiner, and TC director. John has been the driving force behind hiring record numbers of new patent examiners, and in aggressively expanding our e-government programs, including EFSWeb -- which now accounts for over 70% of patent-application filings, and our PFW efforts.
While John fulfills the functions and duties of the Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director, Peggy Focarino, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations, will assume the responsibilities of the Commissioner for Patents. Peggy has been with the agency for more than 31 years, and has tremendous experience, having been a patent examiner, supervisory patent examiner, and TC director. During her tenure as Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations, she implemented a new approach to training examiners, and created hoteling for patent examiners and technical support staff, all while maintaining record levels of performance in patent operations.
Please join me in supporting John and Peggy with their new responsibilities, and in thanking Margaret for her service to our agency.
Warm regards,
Jon Dudas
Mr. Doll (at left) and Ms. Focarino (below right), who take their positions as Acting Deputy Director and Acting Commissioner, respectively, are certainly two of the more experienced members of the PTO management team. Mr. Doll, the "smiling, friendly" face of the PTO over the past few tumultuous years, has been tireless in his efforts to expound and explain the Office's position on a variety of controversial proposals, including the enjoined rules limiting continuations and claims, the Markush and prior art disclosure rules not yet implemented, and the new Board of Appeals rules. Ms. Focarino's involvement in these issues has been less public (and presumably less extensive), but her reasoned memorandum to the patent examining corps in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court's KSR decision may have saved some applicants from improvidently-issued obviousness rejections motivated by the angels of some examiner's less-generous natures.
Of course, these individuals face the prospect of forming an effective team with whoever the incoming Obama administration decides should become the new Director; while there has (and we expect will continue to be) both speculation and advocacy on the identity of this individual, no one in the transition team has disclosed the identity of a prospective new Director, or even if President-elect Obama's team has reached this level of administrators.
Patent Docs thanks Greg Aharonian for alerting us to Director Dudas' letter.
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