Squires Postpones Anniversary Celebration; Gmail Account Raises New Records Questions

A red arrow was added by the editor to draw attention to the email address discussed below.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires has postponed the anniversary celebration scheduled for Tuesday, September 29. In a message sent to invitees from squirescelebration@gmail.com and signed “John,” Squires said his schedule “isn’t cooperating” and called a “rain delay until we can reschedule.” The message provides no new date.

Postponement does not resolve the ethical and legal questions IPWatchdog raised last week about the event, including who is paying for it, whether it serves an official USPTO purpose, and what role USPTO personnel have played in its planning. And now, with this postponement, another question arises: Why are communications about a celebration featuring remarks from the Director being sent through a Gmail account rather than a government account?

IPWatchdog does not know who created or controls the “squirescelebration” Gmail account, whether USPTO personnel have used it to plan the event, or whether any messages have been copied or forwarded to official accounts. And while it may be easy to jump to the conclusion that the use of such an email account is for the purpose of frustrating Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, it would be premature to reach that conclusion based on this information alone. Still, if federal employees are conducting official business through the account, the resulting records must be preserved under federal records law.

To be perfectly clear, using Gmail would not, by itself, place agency records beyond the reach of a FOIA request, although it is odd given historical agency practice. The proper protocol if a Gmail account were to be used would be to copy an official account to preserve public records. But typically, the USPTO has set up @uspto.gov e-mail accounts for events, such as inventioncon@uspto.gov (for Invention-Con), WES@uspto.gov (for the Women’s Entrepreneurship Symposium), and PatentQualityEventParticipationBox@uspto.gov (for the Patent Quality Chat). There are numerous other examples, but interestingly, there exists a particularly close comparison. The Southwest Regional Outreach Office anniversary celebration marking 10 years of supporting innovators and entrepreneurs in the Southwest region featured remarks by Director Squires and used southwest@uspto.gov as the e-mail for correspondence.

All these examples demonstrate that the agency has an established way to use a shared address for events within its own domain. So, why is squirescelebration@gmail.com being used for this event?

Since the Squires anniversary celebration has not been canceled, but instead merely postponed, the USPTO should say whether it considers this a personal or official event, state who is paying for the event and whether any USPTO employees are planning or will execute the event, identify who is managing the “squirescelebration” Gmail account, and explain how any records of official business connected by or with the celebration are being preserved and made available for disclosure.

Rescheduling the party does not make these and other questions go away.