Montana selected for new USPTO community engagement office location
New community engagement office to serve as innovation center for local/regional innovators
ALEXANDRIA, VA—The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced the selection of Montana as the first of several new locations of community engagement offices to serve innovators in part of the eight-state area formerly serviced by the Rocky Mountain Regional Outreach Office. The eight-state area included: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Nebraska.
The USPTO reimagines its community engagement footprint as an agile model to meet innovators where they are.
Montana is emerging as a national leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with the
Bozeman-Gallatin Valley region serving as the anchor of the state’s growing tech hub corridor. From 2019 to 2023, the number of patent applications filed by Montana inventors has more than doubled. In October 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce designated Montana as a federal Tech Hub, recognizing the strength of its advanced manufacturing, photonics, bioscience, and software industries.
"Think of these as high-touch points of presence planted right in the heart of local innovation ecosystems—universities, start-up accelerators, incubators, tech hubs, and yes, even communities where personal branding and media presence are becoming pathways to economic opportunity. Where innovation is, we are," said John A. Squires, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO.
The office will be housed at Montana State University, a top-tier research university, serving as a national leader in optics, bioscience, and agricultural technology. As the host of the new community engagement office, it 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 the area’s ecosystem of industries and stakeholders.
The Bozeman corridor has attracted major private investment and federal research dollars, catalyzing high-wage job growth and technology commercialization. The region also includes fast-scaling startups and global research partners. The community engagement office will work closely with intellectual property practitioners and services, startups, and job-growth accelerators. They will also collaborate with local STEM organizations on outreach and educational programming.
"We’ve had great success with our first community outreach office, which was established this year at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property," noted Director Squires.
Megan Carpenter, the Dean of the University of New Hampshire’s School of Law said, “I appreciate Director Squires' bold vision for expanding access to America's innovation ecosystem in this way. Having the USPTO's Community Outreach Office in New Hampshire is more than a point of pride, it is a commitment to expanding access to innovation for every creative, entrepreneur, and small business. The success of this office shows what is possible when federal leadership and local institutions work hand-in-hand to strengthen America's innovation economy, and I am thrilled to see the USPTO expand this impact nationwide.”
“The 2022 UAIA authorized our UNH office, as well as three additional locations. Starting today with Montana, our new community engagement offices will serve as an extension of the agency’s outreach operations, with a different mission, a different posture, and a new mindset. The core idea is simple, we are placing USPTO-enabled engagement nodes into the heart of start-up, university, incubator, and innovation-ecosystem communities. In doing so, we’ll be 'at the top of the funnel' for ideas, brands, and inventions—not by replacing our regional examination infrastructure, but by complementing it with a nimble, cost-effective, and deeply embedded presence,” said Director Squires.
In October 2025, the USPTO issued a request for comments seeking public input regarding the locations for one or more community outreach offices (now referred to as community engagement offices) in the eight-state area formerly serviced by the Rocky Mountain Regional Outreach Office that the USPTO statutorily established under the Unleashing American Innovators Act of 2022. The purposes of the community outreach offices, as stated in the Act, include:
- 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
- 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.
Montana State University was selected based upon meeting the USPTO’s stated criteria of having:
- robust research activity and graduate-level programs of study in areas which lead to innovations, IP, and IP-intensive companies/industries;
- availability and concentration of existing commercialization and business development resources; and
- ability to support all inventors.
Montana is a vast, rural, and frontier state, providing opportunities for the USPTO to leverage critical access to inventors, entrepreneurs, tribal communities, and veterans across the Northern Rockies who may face barriers to navigating the patent process.
The new community engagement offices will work closely with intellectual property practitioners and services, startups, and job-growth accelerators, leveraging existing partnership infrastructure rather than building costly new facilities from scratch. They will also collaborate with local STEM organizations on outreach and educational programming.
Said Director Squires, "We want the USPTO to be 'right there, right now' where innovation is happening. Our community engagement offices will help us do exactly that – at lower cost, at higher speed, with greater presence. We’ll be raising awareness of IP risk, opportunities, global markets, and licensing/business models. In particular, we’ll be ready partners to surface high-quality portfolio potential early, so new innovation can be born strong. Welcome, Montana."
The USPTO’s new community engagement offices will all be designed as centers for the cultivation and expansion of vibrant innovation, investment, and entrepreneurship supported by intellectual property.
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