USPTO Selects Georgia and Alabama HBCU, MSI Innovation Ecosystems for Southeast Community Engagement Office Expansion

Regionally Specialized Innovation Ecosystem Partnerships to Serve as Nodes of University Research Excellence and Engagement with HBCUs and MSIs

ALEXANDRIA, VA — America’s Innovation Agency, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), announced the selection of Georgia and Alabama innovation ecosystem partnerships in response to its recent RFC to further the agency’s Community Engagement Office expansion to include the Southeast region. The selection of Georgia and Alabama will focus particularly on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). Click here to view the full announcement.

In Georgia, the USPTO will work with universities in the Atlanta University Center Consortium (Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College and Morehouse School of Medicine) and the Center for Black Entrepreneurship (CBE - founded by Spelman, Morehouse, Black Economic Alliance Foundation, and Bank of America) which has a national reach with its experiential Launch Incubator for Traction (LIFT) program. USPTO will work with the AUC-GRANTED Initiative which has a collaborative approach to expand the research support and service capacity including technology transfer.

The Georgia ecosystem partnership will emphasize commercialization, entrepreneurship, branding, startup ecosystems, and innovation acceleration.

Spelman has a long-standing legacy of fostering academic excellence and empowering Black women to lead and innovate on a global scale,” said Dr. Mark Lee, SVP for Academic Affairs and Provost at Spelman. “This partnership with the USPTO provides our students and the broader Atlanta University Center community with vital resources to protect their intellectual property, cultivate their entrepreneurial talents, and turn groundbreaking ideas into real-world impact. Our focus remains entirely on equipping the next generation of innovators with the tools they need to thrive and build lasting legacies."

As robust engines of invention and innovation, HBCUs receive more than $810 million of federal research and development funding according to the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF-NCSES). Indeed, innovation at HBCUs is vast, cutting across a wide spectrum of science and technologies including medicine, engineering, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, defense technologies, and the physical sciences.

The Georgia and Alabama innovation ecosystem partnerships will carry out the strategic direction of the USPTO’s Office of Public Engagement and ensure the USPTO’s initiatives and programs are tailored to each community’s unique ecosystem of industries and stakeholders. They will also collaborate with local STEM organizations on outreach and educational programming and work closely with intellectual property practitioners and services, startups, commercialization initiatives, and job-growth accelerators.

It is an honor to be selected as a site for a USPTO Community Engagement Office engagement partnership,” said Dr. Grant Warner, the Executive Director of the CBE who has dedicated his career to implementing new opportunities for Black entrepreneurs, particularly at HBCUs. “It will allow us to take our programming to the next level with respect to both innovation and branding."

Across America, university research and breakthroughs fuel the nation’s leadership not only in innovation but also in commercialization, manufacturing, and technology. The newly announced innovation ecosystem partnerships will help connect HBCUs and MSIs directly to the engines of entrepreneurship, advanced manufacturing, strategic technologies, and economic growth. The partnerships will provide robust hubs where researchers, innovators and funders can help translate research into real-world impact and in turn drive the next generation of American ingenuity and stronger infrastructure to ensure American innovation is developed, commercialized, and scaled in the United States.

The purposes of these ecosystem partnerships, as stated in the UAIA of 2022, include:

1. To partner with local community organizations, institutions of higher education, research institutions, and businesses to create tailored community-based programs that provide education regarding the patent system and promote the career benefits of innovation and entrepreneurship; and
2. To educate prospective inventors, including individual inventors, small businesses, veterans, low-income populations, students, rural populations, and any geographic group of innovators that the Director may determine to be underrepresented in patent filings, about all public and private resources available to potential patent applicants, including the patent pro bono program.

The decision on the Georgia and Alabama ecosystem partnerships was based on the following criteria:

1. Robust research activity and graduate-level programs of study in areas which lead to innovations, IP, and IP-intensive companies/industries;
2. Availability and concentration of existing commercialization and business development resources (Innovation Ecosystem); and

Today’s announcement furthers the USPTO’s plan to develop and advance specialized engagement partners as engines of opportunity, growth and global competitiveness. With specialized nodes of university research excellence as active partners, the USPTO is building a nationwide infrastructure comprising nodes of American ingenuity with start-up, university, incubator, manufacturing, advance technology and innovation-ecosystem communities as its lifeblood. America’s Innovation Agency congratulates and welcomes its new partners.