USPTO Director Kathi Vidal Announces She Will Resign in Early December

On the heels of Donald Trump’s election win last week, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal today announced on her personal LinkedIn page that she has internally informed the USPTO staff she will be resigning from her post as of the second week in December. Deputy Director Derrick Brent will take over until the incoming Trump Administration appoints a new Director.

Brent was sworn in as Deputy Director in August of 2022 and hails from both the public and private sectors, most recently serving as a consultant advising startups on IP and other issues. He consulted for Cut Golf, an early-stage golf equipment and apparel company. He also served for six years as Chief Counsel to Senator Barbara Boxer and was known as “a respected authority on 2011’s America Invents Act,” according to a USPTO press release at the time of his appointment. He clerked for the Honorable Algenon L. Marbley, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, served as a litigator with the law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP in Ohio, and as a Senior Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division.

Prior to Brent’s appointment, the Deputy Director position had been essentially vacant for some time. Former Commissioner for Patents Drew Hirshfeld, who had been “performing the functions and duties of the Director” since former Director Andrei Iancu’s departure in January 2021, stepped in as Acting Deputy Director upon Vidal’s swearing in in April of 2022. Before that, David Berdan was performing the functions and duties of the Deputy Director after Coke Stewart—who had been performing the functions and duties of the Deputy Director before him—left to join the faculty of the Regent University School of Law. Laura Peter served as Deputy Director under Iancu.

Brent is also an engineer who worked for General Motors prior to becoming a lawyer. He served as an engineer in the company’s powertrain division and managed the engineering and business activities for multiple subcontracted manufacturing facilities across the country. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State University and a Juris Doctor degree from the Northwestern University School of Law (now the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law).

Accomplishments

Vidal in her announcement today characterized her time at the Office as having “transformed the USPTO” together with her team, and dubbed their accomplishments “unprecedented.”

“We have executed on our mission to proactively defend and promote strong intellectual property to lift communities, create better jobs, and foster the American innovative spirit in everyone,” Vidal wrote. “And we have been successful because of our commitment to putting employees first.”

This is a sentiment some might take issue with, however. While not commenting on Vidal specifically but on the USPTO as a whole, at IPWatchdog LIVE 2024, former USPTO Directors Andrei Iancu and David Kappos joined former Commissioner for Patents Bob Stoll and IPWatchdog’s Gene Quinn on a panel in which they discussed the present state of the USPTO and said one of the most pressing issues for the Office was examiner and employee morale. While the USPTO was once at the top of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government list, today it sits at #236. The Office moved up in the rankings under the leadership of Kappos, who said he achieved that through “a lot of little things but it does come down to empowerment of the career employees.” Today, said Kappos, “the agency has become a lot more political and there’s no advancement of career employees.”

The agency’s ranking has been steadily falling for some time now, however. It has not been in first place since 2013, and has crept fairly steadily downward since then.

Vidal noted in her resignation announcement today though that the Office was named one of the most inspiring places to work in government this year.

The IPWatchdog LIVE panelists also noted that the backlog has crept back up under Vidal, something Vidal addressed in a Director’s Blog post this July, calling it “inherited” and due to “unpredictable macro effects, including a pandemic that had an outsized impact on our application inventories.” According to the Office’s recent Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees, the present backlog is predicted to increase to 820,200 by FY 2026 before decreasing to 780,000 by FY 2029.

During her term, Vidal issued a slew of requests for comments and proposed rules, some of which were extremely controversial. However, with her imminent resignation, the most criticized rules are unlikely to move forward now.

Vidal also said today that she will be returning to the private sector. “I will be moving back into the private sector and working with individuals and companies directly, committed to our same mission,” she wrote. She previously worked as a patent litigator and managing partner of the Silicon Valley office of Winston & Strawn.

Vidal was the second woman to be confirmed by the Senate to the position of USPTO Director. Commenting on Vidal’s departure, Judge Susan Braden, formerly a judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, said: “I do hope the new Trump-Vance Administration will appoint a knowledgeable woman as the Undersecretary of Commerce and USPTO Director who knows the agency’s inner workings and has the substantive chops to tackle the challenges at the USPTO.”