USPTO’s Will Covey to Be Named Acting Deputy Director

Will Covey

IPWatchdog has learned that Will Covey, who has been serving as Deputy General Counsel and Director for the Office of Enrollment and Discipline at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), will be named Acting Deputy Director of the USPTO under Coke Morgan Stewart, who was named Acting Director last month.

Covey has been with the USPTO since 2000 and has held a number of positions. He is well liked internally and “has been just as concerned with helping patent practitioners stay out of trouble and understand where the ethical lines are as he has been concerned with punishing inappropriate behavior,” according to IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn.

In addition to Deputy General Counsel and Director at OED, he served as Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel for the Office of General Law. Prior to joining the USPTO he was was a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, served on active duty in the Pentagon, and was a senior officer in the Army Reserve assigned to the Office of the Army Staff, Office of the Judge Advocate General.

The news comes the same week Howard Lutnick was confirmed by the full Senate in a 51-45 vote to be the Trump Administration’s Secretary of Commerce. Lutnick has invented in the software, process and gaming fields, and focused in his confirmation hearing on IP risks associated with China’s growing leadership in emerging technologies and the need to drastically reduce the current USPTO backlog of patent applications.

The Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) welcomed Lutnick’s confirmation today, and C4IP board co-chair and former USPTO director Andrei Iancu said in a statement that it “marks a pivotal moment for America’s innovation ecosystem.”

“As an experienced business leader, inventor, and patent holder, he is uniquely positioned to spearhead the forward-thinking, pro-intellectual property economic policy agenda that America needs,” Iancu added.

With Lutnick in Office and the USPTO’s executive team taking shape, an announcement about Trump’s nominee for USPTO Director could come soon. The top candidate is rumored to be John Squires, currently Chair of the Emerging Companies and IP practice at Dilworth Paxson and former Chief IP Counsel at Goldman Sachs.