October 16, 2000
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New Deputy Commissioner for Trademark Policy and Projects

USPTO HAS NEW DEPUTY COMMISSIONER FOR TRADEMARK POLICY AND PROJECTS

PRESS RELEASE

Lynne Beresford, formerly attorney-advisor in the Office of Legislative and International Affairs (OLIA) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), has been named the agency's Deputy for Trademark Policy and Projects.

"I am extremely pleased that Lynne Beresford has accepted this important position," noted Anne Chasser, Commissioner of Trademarks. "Lynne Beresford brings to this position a superlative record of Government service and a wide range of experience that will be helpful to the agency as we face the challenges of the years ahead," she said.

While with OLIA, Ms. Beresford was responsible for planning and implementing strategies to help achieve U.S. intellectual property goals in the international arena. In the past several years, she has chaired numerous meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications. Under her chairmanship the Committee produced joint resolutions on the protection of well-known trademarks and on simplification of the recorded requirements for trademark licenses. Ms. Beresford was also a USPTO delegate to the diplomatic conference that negotiated the Trademark Law Treaty. She was also instrumental in fundamentally changing the U.S. approach to trademarks related to geographical indications in the Council for the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property .

Ms. Beresford has been with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since 1978. She received both her Bachelor's degree in Accounting and her Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

USPTO, a user fee-funded agency of the United States, within the Department of Commerce, administers laws relevant to granting patents and registering trademarks. The Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office advises the Secretary of Commerce and other Federal departments and agencies on intellectual property policy matters. Over 6 million patents have been issued since the first patent in 1790 and 2.3 million trademarks have been registered since the first in 1870. Last year USPTO issued 161,000 patents and registered 104,000 trademarks.

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