United States: IT Chief Bourgeois Leaves US Patent and Trademark Office

By PatentCafe Staff

On Friday September 3, Douglas Bourgeois, who joined the USPTO as its Chief Information Officer in May, 2001, will leave the Patent Office to become the director of the Interior Department's National Business Center. His departure from the PTO is occurring at a time when legal and industry leaders are pushing for faster, higher quality patents.

Bourgeois joined the Patent Office after having served as Managing Director of Customer Service Technology at Federal Express. Before FedEx, he was an engineer and program manager of aerodynamic testing Allied Signal Aerospace Company.

During his tenure under past PTO Director James Rogan, the PTO began the ambitious deployment of the 21^st Century Strategic Plan which focused, in part, on reduction of pendency and improved patent quality. Office automation, improved systems process and patent E-filing are but a few of the cornerstones of the strategic plan that fell under the eye of the CIO.

Bourgeois can be commended for spearheading the implementation of the new Electronic File Wrapper (EFW) which now allows patent applicants to access their entire pending patent application at any time throughout the prosecution.

The patent office has struggled with wholesale adoption of its electronic filing system however, as customers complained about the unfriendliness and difficulty in implementing the software. The PTO recently released a new EFS program ABX, which promises to simplify the e-filing process.

Bourgeois’ resignation comes at a time when the Senate is considering the United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2004 which hopes to end the 10 year, $750 million practice of diversion of PTO fees to non-PTO activities. Bourgeois supports the bill which passed already passed by Congress. The retention of the estimated $70 million per year could be well spent on modernizing the PTO’s computers and patent office automation software. The USPTO’s patent database currently contains nearly 7 million patent documents.

Although not in a position to fill Bourgeois’ shoes, the USPTO’s Public Patent Advisory Committee (PPAC) today announced the formation of a New E-Filing and E-Government Subcommittee to work with the PTO regarding current technologies and processes being considering to improve electronic filing.

Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com and architect of the company’s Latent Semantic Analysis international patent database was appointed as Chairman of the PPAC E-filing and E-Government Subcommittee. PatentCafe’s ICO Patent Search Engine contains nearly 23 million patent from 7 countries, nearly three times the data in the USPTO’s database. Gibbs has served on the USPTO’s PPAC since it was created, having been appointed to consecutive terms by the US Secretary of Commerce.

Currently, its estimated that less than 5% of the patent filed with the PTO are filed electronically. Gibbs believes that as more patent management solutions similar to PatentCafe’s natural language patent search engine begin incorporating E-filing functionality, it will not only simplify the electronic filing process for patent industry professionals, it will also accelerate the adoption of e-filing, enhance patent quality, and help reduce overall pendency.

PatentCafe® is the leading provider of enterprise intellectual property asset management (IPAM) software and informational resources for industry.

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