Overnight, as the federal government shutdown officially began, another federal closure was announced: the Denver office of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The Rocky Mountain Regional Outreach Office, which opened in the city in 2014, will close permanently, the agency said. No date for the planned closure was announced.
But in a news release, the agency said that a “typical regional office requires more than $1 million of leased office space and overhead expenses,” and that the Denver office employee count had dropped to “less than 10,” at the end of last year.
It also pointed to a December 2024 USPTO report to Congress that called the “physical office space is less necessary” since the agency had “successful and data-driven telework policies,” combined with the increase in virtual education and plans to establish community outreach offices.
“The closure of this office is consistent with that assessment,” the agency said.
The Rocky Mountain regional office was responsible for a nine-state region spanning Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah.
The office was the result of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in 2011. The law required the creation of three satellite offices plus one in Detroit, to better reach inventors outside of the Washington, D.C. area. It also aimed to improve patent examiner retention and attract talent from other parts of the country, especially those who didn’t want to live in D.C. Denver was the second to open, after Detroit.
No permanent closures have been announced for the other regional offices in Detroit, Dallas, San Jose, California and Alexandria, Virginia.
The Colorado Sun has reached out to the USPTO for comment.
Hundreds of examiners, staff linked to Denver office
Russ Slifer, director of the Rocky Mountain office when it opened in 2014, called the USPTO’s rationale of low employee count for closing the Denver office “misleading.”
“There are far more employees with a duty station of Denver, including judges and patent examiners,” Slifer said in an email. “Denver-based employees should not be forced to move to the DC area or quit the USPTO. It will be telling if the Trump administration closes the Dallas office in a red state.”
When reached early Wednesday, he said he hadn’t heard the office was closing.
“I believe there is financial sense for reducing the physical office space or seeking a less expensive alternative (such as sharing space in another federal space). Closing the office without announcing a succession plan is unfortunate. Hopefully, the community outreach will continue in some way,” Slifer said.
After opening the office in 2014, Slifer didn’t stay in Denver long. He was promoted to deputy director for the agency the next year.
Regional director Molly Kocialski took on the role in 2016 with gusto. Kocialski and her team would also show up at many events and meet with lawyers, students and the community as part of the outreach program. She surprised many when she stepped down in early September.
In an earlier story, she told The Sun that she had loved the job and the outreach to inventors, patent examiners and community groups. But, she added, “It became really clear over the last, especially, I’d say, the last four or five months that the outreach job was changing. The expectations of that job was outreach was only going to be intellectual property basics. And that’s great but you don’t need a 30-year practitioner to do that.”
When Kocialski left the job, the number of staff and patent examiners had increased to 354 in the Rocky Mountain region with about 230 in Colorado, she said.
Most work remotely and not in the office, which was inside the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building at 1961 Stout St. in Denver. She was concerned that the patent office would lose talent if judges and examiners were required to move to Washington, D.C.
Sen. Michael Bennet helped get the Rocky Mountain office in Denver in 2011. The Denver area had a growing reputation for startups and entrepreneurs and the state had an outsize share of patents, making it a good pick for a regional office. In a letter promoting Denver, Bennet focused on another key point: “the ability of the USPTO to recruit and hire from a pool of the most-qualified candidates our country has to offer.”
A Bennet spokesperson said Wednesday, “This regional office brought the agency closer to Colorado businesses, leaders, and communities. Since it opened in 2014, the office has been a piece of Colorado’s economic success. He will continue to ensure our state’s innovators and entrepreneurs are provided the federal resources they need to keep building tomorrow’s technologies in Colorado.”
The cost and benefits of the patent office
While the federal government shutdown on Wednesday, the patent office remained opened for business. A sign on its website says, “At present, the USPTO will remain open and fully operational until further notice under operating reserves from the prior year’s fee collections.”
The self-sustaining operation brings in billions of dollars a year by charging fees on patents and trademark applications. According to the USPTO’s budget estimate for fiscal year 2026, which began Wednesday, the patent office anticipates generating $5 billion in revenue just from patent and trademark fees, which is $441 million more than a year ago. Estimated spending is expected to be $300 million less, or $4.68 billion this year compared to $4.57 billion a year ago.
It asked for no appropriations from Congress.
Knowing the patent and trade agency is profitable also made some wonder why the federal government was so concerned about the cost of the lease in Denver.
“They said it exceeds $1 million in overhead, which is pennies when you’re looking at the total billions of dollars of budget that the patent office has,” said Justin Krieger, a managing partner at the Denver office of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. “And there’s also the fact that the patent office is self funded so this has a very minimal cost to keeping the Rocky Mountain Regional Office open is not even a one penny burden on taxpayers.”
Krieger said there’s value in a local office that goes beyond direct dollars. It helps his students at the University of Denver law school, where he teaches a course on patent office litigation. Inside the Denver patent office, there are special rooms to listen and watch hearings by the Patent Trials and Appeals Board judges, or PTAB.
“On the last day of class, I bring the students, or at least I did, to the regional office on a field trip. They get to meet the regional director. They get to meet some PTAB judges and interview them and ask them questions,” Krieger said. “It’s just a tremendously great resource for local students to get that kind of insight that they wouldn’t get without a regional office.”
It’s uncertain whether examiners and judges in the Rocky Mountain region will have to move to D.C. to keep their jobs. But before the agency opened the office in Denver, such staff lived near the agency’s Alexandria headquarters.
The regional offices allowed the patent community, as well as judges and examiners, a place to meet and hold hearings without traveling to D.C.
The closure is a big loss to the community, said Dan Smith, president and advocacy committee chair of the National Association of Patent Practitioners and a patent agent in Boulder.
“NAPP is exploring avenues for collaborating to keep the Rocky Mountain Regional office,” Smith said. “We are also going to review the law that created it, the America Invents Act, and to determine if the office is required or optional.”