Letter from the Chair

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 46 No. 1
• Publication year: 2021
• topic: Intellectual Property

Letter from the Chair

Heather A. Antoine

Stubbs, Alderton & Markiles LLP

Dear IP Section members,

Spring is here once again, and I hope your year is off to a great start! 2021 welcomed a new administration to the White House, and with that, Andrei Iancu stepped down from his position as director of the USPTO. In his resignation letter, he described the office as a "remarkable agency, the nation's epicenter of intellectual property policy and the guardian of America's innovation economy."

In one of the final letters Director Iancu sent as Director, he addressed the gender gap in patent practitioners raised by Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE) in December of 2020. In their letter, the Senators stated, "[w]hile recent data on the demographic make-up of the patent bar is not publicly available, studies from 2013 and 2014 suggest women made up as little as 18%...