Accelerating Research into Innovation: What Universities and the US Patent Office Can Do to Pick Up the Pace

Patents encourage innovation by protecting new products or processes, and empower patent holders to control and profit from commercialization of their inventions. By establishing and securing patent rights, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) helps fulfill the mandate of the U.S. Constitution that Congress "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” Similarly, universities strive to advance their own standing and the public good by translating academic research into commercial innovation. But are they doing enough, or are promising innovations languishing in the fateful gap between invention and commercialization? How can government and academia close that gap and speed up progress?

Vaishali Udupa, the commissioner for patents of the USPTO, addressed these issues, explaining how to transform research into innovation, and ways in which universities and the USPTO — working separately and together — can pick up the pace.

This event was co-sponsored by the Baker Institute McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth, the Science and Technology Policy Program, the Patent and Trademark Resource Center of Fondren Library and Rice University's Office of Innovation.

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Featured Speaker

Vaishali Udupa, the Commissioner for Patents of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, leads the USPTO’s Patents organization as its chief operating officer. She oversees the agency’s 10,000 Patents employees, including more than 9,000 patent examiners. Even before joining the USPTO in January 2023, she was a nationally recognized leader in intellectual property, with over twenty years of experience in strategic IP advisement and complex litigation.

Commissioner Udupa began her IP career at Jones Day and Pennie & Edmonds and most recently served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Litigation at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Commissioner Udupa earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from American University's Washington College of Law.