• Patents
• About us
• Topics

Print version.

Promotion

People, places, procedures and products

A vision for intellectual property examination – 2030

By Jay Lucas, USPTO and John Bambridge, EPO

Introduction

New office technologies of today offer planners for future intellectual property offices wide opportunities to improve procedures under which their offices will operate, the places where their employees may reside, the people who may choose to be their employees and the intellectual property products that they offer the public. 

In this article we will make a short visit to that world, dropping in on a few members of the intellectual property community of the future and watching them working during a typical day.  We offer this glimpse as a spur to the imaginations of our readers, as a starting point for a discussion in a meeting room or friendly pub, and hope that some small aspects of these visions may encourage others to plan with a broadened appreciation of the possibilities.

This three-part essay looks at intellectual property examiniation in 2030 from the perspective of:

• the examiner
• the manager
• the inventor