USPTO Offices

USPTO's mission is supported from our headquarters in Alexandria, Va., and from satellite offices in Detroit, Dallas, Denver, and Silicon Valley, Calif. The Detroit office opened in 2012, and the other offices are scheduled to all be fully operational in 2014. With offices in every time zone, the USPTO has a geographic distribution designed to foster the contributions that intellectual property make to a growing economy.

The four satellite offices serve as hubs for innovation and creativity, and allow us to serve entrepreneurs better than ever before by helping them protect their intellectual property so that they can attract capital, put their business plans into action, and help create more jobs. They are a place for small businesses and entrepreneurs to learn about USPTO services, meet with examiners, and access USPTO’s comprehensive search databases. The USPTO will also work to leverage the diverse make-up of resources and industries unique to each locality to establish partnerships with regional economic development commissions, and general public-private partnerships, in order to offer a tailored suite of IP support services to local start-ups, incubators, and job accelerators.

The satellite offices focus on the USPTO’s core mission of granting intellectual property rights to applicants and doing outreach and education to the innovation community. Other functions, including finance and accounting will be based out of the USPTO Alexandria campus.  

From an applicant perspective, our regional satellite offices will provide a place to meet with and engage with USPTO personnel including IP experts, examiners, and management. Applications will continue to be submitted electronically to USPTO data centers in Virginia, where applications will undergo national security review and classification before being placed on an examiner’s docket for examination. At this juncture the USPTO will not offer a choice of venue as to where an application will be examined. However, the agency will look into ways that such a system may be set up as the program develops.     

Learn more about our Alexandria headquarters.

Learn more about our Detroit satellite office and the services we provide there.

Learn more about our other satellite offices, which are still in progress.