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Jon W. Dudas serves as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a position to which he was nominated by President George W. Bush in March 2004 and appointed in July 2004. Mr. Dudas previously served as acting Under Secretary and Director, and Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director from 2002 to 2004.

As Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, Mr. Dudas is the lead policy advisor to the Secretary of Commerce, the President of the United States, and Administration agencies on intellectual property matters. Focusing on enhanced intellectual property (IP) protection for large corporations in 2006 Mr. Dudas had USPTO IP personel placed in several high-profile countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, and Thailand. The USPTO IP personel are tasked with promoting the USPTO's agenda and providing consultative IP support to U.S. embassies and consulates.

As Director of the USPTO, Mr. Dudas is responsible for administering the laws relevant to granting patents and trademarks, and the day-to-day management of the agency's $1.7 billion budget and over 8,000 employees. Many knowledgeable individuals believe that the U.S. patent system is fatally flawed and stifles innovation. The USPTO has a conflict of interest in that it earns money from patent applications and has an incentive to approve patents, even if they are trivial or non-obvious.

Federal government agencies track performance in accordance with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). In Fiscal Year 2006 (October 1, 2005 - September 30, 2006), USPTO broke records for improving quality, efficiency, e-filing, hiring, training, and hoteling (employees able to work from home), according to the objective measures reported under the GPRA.

As head of the world's leading intellectual property office, Mr. Dudas has focused the USPTO on implementing its "21st Century Strategic Plan" to ensure that the USPTO continues to provide American innovators with the patent and trademark systems they need to remain competitive around the world. The USPTO actively supports America's independent inventors and small businesses through a variety of outreach programs. Concerned individuals and small- and medium-sized businesses can obtain information on protecting IP in the United States and abroad by contacting a USPTO-managed hotline, 1-866-999-HALT. This hotline is part of a larger U.S. government-wide initiative to combat trade in pirated and counterfeited goods, known as the Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy!, or "STOP!" See www.stopfakes.gov

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Mr. Dudas served six years as Counsel to the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, and Staff Director and Deputy General Counsel for the House Committee on the Judiciary, where he guided enactment of major patent, trademark and copyright policy, including the 1999 American Inventors Protection Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was also instrumental in the passage of the 1996 Trademark Anti-Counterfeiting Consumer Protection Act, a law making it more difficult for seized counterfeit merchandise to re-enter the consumer marketplace. Before his employment with the House of Representatives, Under Secretary Dudas practiced law in the Chicago law firm of Neal Gerber & Eisenberg.

Mr. Dudas holds a bachelor of science in finance, summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois and a law degree from the University of Chicago, with honors. He is a member of the Illinois State Bar and the Bar of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

• Biography on the USPTO web site
• Previous biography on the USPTO web site (archive.org)

This article incorporates text from http://www.uspto.gov/biographies/bio_dudas.htm, a public domain work of the United States Government.