Social Distancing: the Location, Location, Location of the Detroit Patent Office

As patent stakeholders here in Southeastern Michigan we must ask ourselves a very important question regarding our future and the Detroit Patent Office: why is the Detroit Office being so socially distant, segregated from the local patent and R&D communities? The Detroit Office was established in Rivertown Detroit in 2012, months after the passage of its creating legislation—the America Invents Act.

Section 23(b) of the AIA outlines five purposes for PTO satellite offices.

Purposes.—The purposes of the satellite offices established under subsection (a) are to—

(1) increase outreach activities to better connect patent filers and innovators with the Office;

(2) enhance patent examiner retention;

(3) improve recruitment of patent examiners;

(4) decrease the number of patent applications waiting for examination; and

(5) improve the quality of patent examination.

(emphasis given). Additionally, Section 23(c)(1)(D) states that “[i]n selecting the location of each satellite office to be established under subsection (a), the Director. . . shall consider the availability of scientific and technically knowledgeable personnel in the region from which to draw new patent examiners at minimal recruitment cost. . .” (emphasis given).

Based upon this mandate, after the creation of the Detroit Office, the Patent Office established “site selection performance indicators” to evaluate potential office sites. The indicia relate back to the five primary purposes of the satellites. These indicators enabled decisionmakers to compare a plurality of potential locations and their attributes to make an objective conclusion as to the best overall forum. Relevant indicia include proximity to: patent grantees, small entities, patent agents/attorneys and technically qualified individuals as well as enhancements to quality of life and reduced commute time for examiners. US PTO, Report on the Satellite Offices, https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/aia_implementation/USPTO_AIASatelliteOfficesReport_2014Sept30_Online.pdf, (Sept. 2014). Using these performance indicators makes sense because the satellites were created to increase community outreach, enhance examiner recruitment and improve retention, inter alia, under §23(b). Satellites, therefore, should be as close as possible to their local patent and R&D communities.

But the Rivertown neighborhood in which the Detroit Patent Office is located is nowhere near any of the R&D or patent activity here in Southeastern Michigan. Rivertown Detroit would not rank in the top five locations within Southeastern, Michigan with respect to the PTO’s site selection performance indicators. At least for this reason, the Detroit Patent Office is significantly inconvenient for most patent stakeholders to visit and not in conformity with its governing statute. AIA § 23(b) & (c). It is unfortunately “socially distant” from the local patenting and technical communities.

Rivertown Detroit is not where most patent professionals work. Nearly half of the State of Michigan’s intellectual property attorneys do not even work in the same county, much less the same city as the current Detroit PTO location. State Bar of Michigan, Section Membership Demographics, https://www.michbar.org/file/opinions/sectiondemographics2020.pdf#page=109&zoom=100,45,48 (2020-2021). The Michigan Bar reports that only 12.6% of the state’s IP attorneys work in Wayne County, where Detroit is located. Contrastingly, 49.3% of Michigan’s IP attorneys work in Oakland County. The state’s largest patent law firms are also located in Oakland County: Harness, Dickey & Pierce and Cantor Colburn are in Troy and Brooks Kushman is in Southfield. Harrity, Top Patent Firms 2020, https://harrityllp.com/services/patent-analytics/top-patent-firms-2020/. Troy is 24 miles and Southfield is 16 miles from the Detroit Office.

Additionally, Rivertown Detroit is not the work location of most patent grantees or scientific and technically knowledgeable personnel, under §23(b) & (c). The largest local patent filers are Ford Motor, General Motors, Denso, Toyota, Nissan and Fiat Chrysler. All of General Motors’ technical headquarters, Denso’s technical and non-technical HQ, Nissan’s technical HQ and Fiat Chrysler’s technical and non-technical HQ are in Oakland County. Ford’s HQ is in Dearborn, Wayne County, 10 miles away from the Rivertown neighborhood; and Toyota’s technical HQ is in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, 44 miles from Rivertown. Most small technical companies are also probably located proximate to these R&D centers.

We can estimate that most R&D professionals, like others, wish to live near their work locations. This reduces commute time and increases quality of life. Thus, the quality of life for patent examiners and administrative patent law judges in the Detroit Office would also greatly benefit from moving the location closer to local R&D centers—where similarly situated scientists work and live.

If the Detroit Office wishes to remain within the City of Detroit since §§23 & 24 of the AIA makes explicit reference to the City and no amendment is pending, the Rivertown neighborhood is still not one of the top Detroit neighborhoods to facilitate the Office’s purposes. It is a significantly less safe neighborhood than central Downtown or any of the earlier mentioned locales. It is surrounded by vacant industrial buildings and/or low-income residential apartment buildings on the other side of Jos Campau Rd., down Atwater as well as down the Detroit Riverwalk towards Belle Isle. Rivertown itself is more than 1 mile from the heart of downtown Detroit. Most attorneys and technical professionals who labor and live in the City of Detroit do so in the 48226 and 48201 zip codes, proximate to Woodward Avenue.

Accordingly, the Detroit Patent Office gives “social distancing” a whole new meaning. What contagion are we afraid the local examining staff will catch? Since the Rivertown location is neither convenient for patent practitioners or R&D staff why do we continue to accept it?????? There is no history of public commentary on that location having been solicited, reviewed or published before the decision to go to Rivertown was made. The Administrative Procedure Act, 5 USC §551 et seq.; US PTO, AIA Studies and Reports, Satellite Offices, https://www.uspto.gov/patents/laws/america-invents-act-aia/aia-studies-and-reports . Now is the time to stop being so distant from our own patent office, now is the time to comment! We are all stakeholders in our local patent office. Accordingly, we most certainly have a say in its dealings.

Thank you for sending your thoughts and comments to the US PTO Acting Director’s Office care of his assistant Alma Rubio at alma.rubio1@uspto.gov. The subject of your communication should read “Comments on Review of the Location of the Detroit Satellite Office.” Additionally, for more information on these statistics see a letter I recently wrote to the Patent Office Director on this issue. Letter from Kristy Downing, Patent Attorney, to Drew Hirschfeld, Acting Director of the US PTO, re: Review of the Location of the Detroit Satellite Office, (Jan. 4, 2022) https://kristyjdowning.wixsite.com/enewsletter/kristy-s-publications .