Effort to speed patents, new Silicon Valley office The Bottom Line By Andrew S. Ross

House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct Chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., reads the verdict against Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010. Rangel, once one of the most influential House members, was convicted Tuesday on 11 counts of breaking ethics rules and now faces punishment. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen less House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct Chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., reads the verdict against Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010. Rangel, once one ... more Photo: Cliff Owen, ASSOCIATED PRESS Photo: Cliff Owen, ASSOCIATED PRESS Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Effort to speed patents, new Silicon Valley office 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Lots of high-fiving in Silicon Valley now that it's getting its very own U.S. patent office.

It's not clear when - or precisely where - the office will open, but "we want to move forward as quickly as possible," said acting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank, who said Silicon Valley, as reported in Monday's Chronicle, is one of four new satellite locations chosen to help speed up America's logjammed patent-granting process.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who helped lead the charge on behalf of Silicon Valley, fully expected her city to be the officially anointed site. While that seems likely, it turns out to be a trifle premature.

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"It will be in the general San Jose area," said Vikrum Aiyer, a Commerce Department spokesman, explaining that a federal procurement process has to occur first.

David Kappos, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said that on-site survey teams are being sent out to scour the local real estate scene, and that a number of cities prominent in the valley, like Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Cupertino or Sunnyvale, might be considered.

Kappos, along with Blank, will be in the area next week meeting with high-tech executives, entrepreneurs and public officials. They're also stopping by Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver, the two sites chosen along with Silicon Valley, and Detroit, the first announced satellite office, which opens for business July 13.

Six hundred cities applied, or had recommendations filed on their behalf, including Oakland, Fremont, San Francisco and several in Silicon Valley. Blank said geographical diversity was a main consideration in choosing the winners.

"The four offices will function as hubs of innovation and creativity, helping protect and foster American innovation in the global marketplace, helping businesses cut through red tape, and creating new economic opportunities in each of the local communities," the patent office announcement said.

And jobs, said Blank. At the outset, "a little more or little less" than the 125 patent examiners hired for the Detroit office, she added, drawn mostly from the pool of local techies and patent attorneys. Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said he expects the number to be higher.

One would hope so. Silicon Valley alone accounted for 12 percent of all patents registered nationwide in 2010. In the same year, California accounted for 30,080 patents granted, 25 percent of the U.S. total. Now - or at least no later than September 2014, according to a deadline set by Congress - California will have one office to help go through the 620,000 patent applications now hanging fire at the patent office headquarters in Alexandria, Va.

"If you're a business in San Francisco, and you've created a new brand for your company, or come up with an invention, you'll have a representative close by you can talk to if you want to apply for a patent," said Kappos.

That doesn't mean the application will necessarily be handled locally, given the enormous number of patents applied for in the Bay Area and statewide. Smaller firms, in particular, shouldn't get too excited, said Stuart Meyer, an intellectual property attorney with Fenwick & West in Mountain View.

"The PTO's plan for the satellite offices does not include making sure that the geography of inventors will be matched with that of the examiners. A Silicon Valley company may have an examiner from Detroit working on its patent application, for example," he said.

Local intellectual property attorneys could certainly anticipate a flood of new business, however, once the Silicon Valley office is up and running. Some may even be called upon to become administrative patent judges, often the last line of defense against one of the banes of the tech industry - "patent trolls" who file groundless infringement suits that cost legitimate patent holders time and tens of millions of dollars to fight.

"This is a particularly good area to recruit patent attorneys to be judges," said Kappos. "We'll be focusing on judges to adjudicate these issues more immediately."

"Providing better customer service" - one of the main goals of the patent office expansion - added Blank, "means higher-quality patents, and less patent litigation."