Save the date! USPTO Design Day 2022

(Update:  you can now register for Design Day 2022.  See blog article.)

A date has been tentatively set for USPTO’s Design Day 2022.  The date is Thursday, April 21, 2022. 

When I attended the earliest USPTO Design Day events, I sort of appreciated only the aspects of the event that might be important for a design practitioner.  It was only after attending several of the USPTO Design Day events that I gained a bit of an understanding that Design Day is a big day for many of the Examiners in Technology Center 2900 (the tech center that examines US design patent applications).  For some Examiners this is a relatively rare opportunity to get a sense of how important US design patents are for the design community and for makers of consumer goods.  It is a relatively rare opportunity for an Examiner to meet face-to-face some of the people who create the designs that show up in the applications that they examine, and to hear the all-too-rare “thank you” for the work that they do.

And of course for those whose professional practice centers on prosecution of US design patent applications, the USPTO Design Day is a rare opportunity to talk with design Examiners face-to-face and, perhaps, to understand a bit better what the prosecution process is like from the Examiner’s point of view.

By the time I had attended half a dozen of the USPTO Design Day events, I realized that some of the most rewarding moments for me had taken place during coffee breaks and lunch breaks. 

Eventually I got invited to help with the planning of the USPTO Design Day events.  

Then Covid happened.  And just as with all of the other valuable in-person meetings for various professional associations, USPTO Design Day morphed into what was for me, at least, a very unrewarding activity in front of a computer monitor.  Two years have passed during which nothing about any professional meeting has been the way we remember it to be.

Now it is 2022 and we all try to look forward.  I am one of the members of the planning committee for USPTO’s Design Day 2022.  It is not easy to plan events like this, given the uncertainty of Covid.  Will the event turn out to be only on the Internet?  Will there be an in-person component to the event?  No matter how carefully the planners try to plan the event, things might happen with Covid that could change everything.

But anyway, at least tentatively it looks like Design Day 2022 will probably happen on Thursday, April 21, 2022.  So you might as well save the date.