New regional patent office will be located in Denver

DENVER – The new satellite U.S. patent office recently awarded to Colorado will be located in downtown Denver, FOX31 Denver is first to report.

Roughly a month after the U.S. Commerce Dept. selected Colorado as one of three sites for new regional patent offices, officials have decided to put the office in existing space at the Federal Building downtown.

The U.S. Patent and Trade Office just signed a lease on a 25,000 square foot space in the Byron G. Rogers Building at 1960 Stout Street, which has been under renovation for two years.

They also considered sites in Stapleton, near Denver International Airport, on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora and at the Federal Center in Lakewood.

A big factor in the selection is that the space already exists and that a new facility won’t have to be built from scratch, thus reducing the overall expense.

The new patent office, which politicians have been working to win for three years, is anticipated to create 1,000 new jobs and to generate $440 million for the local economy.

“This brings us one step closer to opening Colorado’s regional patent office and delivering the jobs and economic development that come with it,” said Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet in a statement to FOX31 Denver.

Bennet, a Democrat who authored the legislation that authorized regional patent offices around the country as a way of easing the backlog at the main patent office outside Washington, DC, fought hard to bring one of them to Colorado.

“The patent office will firmly establish our state as a destination for inventors and entrepreneurs and bolster our reputation as a hotbed for cutting-edge industries with deeply embedded cultures of innovation.”

Congresswoman Diana DeGette, whose Denver district will be home to the new patent office, also heralded the announcement Wednesday.

“Many of us have long known that Colorado is leading the nation with innovations in telecommunications, biomedical discovery, and clean energy technology – the types of innovations that will spark economic development and extensive job creation,” DeGette, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Today’s announcement is a well-deserved acknowledgement of Colorado’s – and the Denver-area’s in particular – entrepreneurial leadership.”