Two years since Newport defied the odds and

away from Seattle, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wants Portland to land a federal agency field office of its own.

The Oregon Democrat met with about 35 local business and public officials Thursday to plot how Portland can convince the

to locate a new satellite office in the Rose City.

Such an office would employ between 200 and 500. The NOAA center in Newport will employ about 175.

The America Invent Act, a sweeping patent reform bill passed into law in September, calls for the patent office to establish three satellite offices around the country. the agency has already decided to put one of the new offices in

.

Administrators at the patent office, the bulwark of the country’s intellectual property protection system, feels that branching out beyond its Alexandria, Va., headquarters will improve customer service and improve employee retention..

But Portland is not the only city vying for the satellite office. At a meeting Thursday, local officials tracking the matter said San Francisco and Denver appear to be mounting their own efforts.

"You strip it all down and someone in the West is going to get one of these offices," Wyden said. "We need to pull out all the stops."

Participants at the meeting agreed that a city with a vibrant technology industry has an advantage in the competition. The agency has stated that the ability to recruit employees with the science and technology chops needed to serve as patent examiners will be a key consideration.

Portland's technology cluster can't compare to Silicon Valley or Seattle. The lack of a slam-dunk homegrown success story is glaring.

But the Silicon Forest is no slouch.

Curtis Rose, from

said at Thursday's meeting that employees from H-P's Pacific Northwest operations in Corvallis, Vancouver and Boise generated about 25 percent of the company's patents over the last five years, he said.

"All this talk about things here going away, we don't see that," Rose said.

obtained about a thousand patents last year, said company official Mark Tennant. Xerox's 1,700 Oregon employees, most of them in Wilsonville, were responsible for 133 of them.

The city boasts about 10 law firms with patent practices, which may also prove important to the patent office.

Other participants in the meeting pointed out that the area's world-class athletic footwear and apparel industry also works in Portland's favor. Companies like Nike obtain a prolific number of design patents and zealously guard those designs.

It's not just participation in the patent process that federal officials will consider. Quality of life will be a factor, as will a

, which is largely why Detroit landed the first satellite office.

Wyden remarked, somewhat ruefully, that Portland fills the bill on both counts.

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