United States Patent and Trademark Office


The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington, Virginia.
The USPTO is "unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars". Its "operating structure is like a business in that it receives requests for services—applications for patents and trademark registrations—and charges fees projected to cover the cost of performing the services provide".
The office is headed by the under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office., John A. Squires is the undersecretary and director, having been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as part of an en bloc vote.
The USPTO cooperates with the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office as one of the Trilateral Patent Offices. The USPTO is also a Receiving Office, an International Searching Authority and an International Preliminary Examination Authority for international patent applications filed in accordance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

Mission

The legal basis for the United States patent system is the Copyright Clause in Section 8 of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power to grant patents and copyrights on a national basis. Trademark law, on the other hand, is considered to be authorized by the Commerce Clause.
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The USPTO maintains a permanent, interdisciplinary historical record of all U.S. patent applications in order to fulfill objectives outlined in the United States Constitution. The PTO's mission is to promote "industrial and technological progress in the United States and strengthen the national economy" by:
The USPTO is headquartered at the Alexandria Campus, consisting of 4 buildings in a city-like development surrounded by ground floor retail and high rise residential buildings between the Metro stations of King Street station and Eisenhower Avenue station where the actual Alexandria Campus is located between Duke Street to Eisenhower Avenue, and between John Carlyle Street to Elizabeth Lane in Alexandria, Virginia.
The USPTO was expected by 2014 to open its first ever satellite offices in Detroit, Dallas, Denver, and Silicon Valley to reduce backlog and reflect regional industrial strengths. The first satellite office opened in Detroit on July 13, 2012. In 2013, due to the budget sequestration, the satellite office for Silicon Valley, which is home to one of the nation's top patent-producing cities, was put on hold. However, renovation and infrastructure updates continued after the sequestration, and the Silicon Valley location opened in the San Jose City Hall in 2015.
In 2024, the USPTO reduced its leased space in Alexandria, pointing to its increasingly remote work force and cost savings initiatives. The Alexandria campus no longer includes the Remsen and Randolph buildings, nor the Elizabeth Townhouse and West Garage. In November 2025, the U.S. General Services Administration and U.S. National Science Foundation announced the new NSF headquarters will be located at the Randolph building that the USPTO has vacated.
On October 1, 2025, the USPTO announced plans to close the Rocky Mountain Regional Outreach Office in Denver.
, the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year, the PTO had 9,716 employees, nearly all of whom are based at its five-building headquarters complex in Alexandria. Of those, 6,242 were patent examiners and 388 were trademark examining attorneys; the rest are support staff. While the agency has noticeably grown in recent years, the rate of growth was far slower in fiscal 2009 than in the recent past; this is borne out by data from fiscal 2005 to the present: As of the end of FY 2018, the USPTO was composed of 12,579 federal employees, including 8,185 patent examiners, 579 trademark examiners, and 3,815 other staff.
At end of FYEmployeesPatent examinersTrademark examining attorneysPatent filings Trademark filingsPatent application backlog
202414,0828,944765466,079767,138
202313,4528,568756594,143737,018
202213,1038,509718457,510787,798
202112,9638,073662650,703943,928
202012,9288,434622653,311738,112
201912,6529,614701666,843673,233
201812,5798,185579647,572594,107
201712,5888,147549650,350530,270526,579
201612,7258,351570650,411530,270537,655
201512,6679,161456618,062503,889553,221
201412,4509,302429618,457455,017
201311,7738,051409601,464433,654
201211,5317,935386565,406415,026608,283
201110,2106,780378536,604398,667
20109,5076,225378509,367368,939726,331
20099,7166,243388485,500352,051750,596
20089,5186,055398495,095401,392750,596
20078,9135,477404467,243394,368
20064,779413
20054,177357
20043,681286
20033,579256
19985,300
1996189,979200,640
1995221,304175,307
1994186,126155,376
1993174,553139,735
1992172,539125,237
1986120,98869,253
1976101,80737,074

Patent examiners make up the bulk of the employees at USPTO. They hold degrees in various scientific disciplines, but do not necessarily hold law degrees. Unlike patent examiners, trademark examiners must be licensed attorneys.
All examiners work under a strict, "count"-based production system. For every application, "counts" are earned by composing, filing, and mailing a first office action on the merits, and upon disposal of an application.
Prior to 2012, decisions of patent examiners could be appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, an administrative law body of the USPTO. Decisions of the BPAI could further be appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or a civil suit could be brought against the Commissioner of Patents in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The United States Supreme Court may ultimately decide on a patent case. Under the America Invents Act, the BPAI was converted to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or "PTAB". Similarly, decisions of trademark examiners could be appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, with subsequent appeals directed to the Federal Circuit, or a civil action may also be brought.

Management

In March 2025, President Donald J. Trump nominated attorney John A. Squires, the former chief intellectual property attorney at Goldman Sachs, to serve as the USPTO director. He was sworn in on September 22, 2025. Coke Morgan Stewart, who served as Acting Director until Squires was sworn in, serves as the deputy director of the USPTO.

Fee diversion

For many years, Congress has "diverted" about 10% of the fees that the USPTO collected into the general treasury of the United States. In effect, this took money collected from the patent system to use for the general budget. This fee diversion has been generally opposed by patent practitioners, inventors, the USPTO, as well as former federal judge Paul R. Michel. These stakeholders would rather use the funds to improve the patent office and patent system, such as by implementing the USPTO's 21st Century Strategic Plan. The last six annual budgets of the George W. Bush administration did not propose to divert any USPTO fees, and the first budget of the Barack Obama administration continued this practice, as well as the second budget of the Trump administration; however, stakeholders continue to press for a permanent end to fee diversion.
The discussion of which party can appropriate the fees is more than a financial question. Patent fees represent a policy lever that influences both the number of applications submitted to the office as well as their quality.