Intellectual Property 101: Demystifying the Patent Process

Violeta Prieto is a Primary Patent Examiner in the optical measurement and testing area with emphasis in interferometry, spectroscopy, and colorimetry. She recently served in the Patent Training Academy as a Training Assistant and is currently an Assistant Outreach Coordinator for the Western Regional Office, supporting programs for inventors, entrepreneurs, and other communities in the western United States along with K-12 STEM activities. Violeta holds a PhD in Physics from University of Maryland. Before joining the USPTO in 2013, Violeta acquired extensive hands-on teaching and outreach experience, taught several graduate and undergraduate courses, coached and prepared the US Physics Olympiad Team, co-led both the 9th grade and 11th grade Summer Girls Outreach program at the University of Maryland, was recipient of the GK-12 NSF fellowship, and was an Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Postdoctoral Fellow at a US government laboratory.    

Wade is a Primary Patent Examiner in Technology Center 3700 at the USPTO. He started his career at the USPTO in 2008 and is currently serving as an Assistant Outreach Officer for the Silicon Valley Regional Office. As an examiner, he examines medical devices for patentability, including stents, lancets, heart valves, and surgical robots. In addition to currently serving at an Assistant Outreach Officer, Wade has served on a variety of details within the USPTO, including details with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, Technical Quality Assurance Shop, and Patent Training Academy. He has earned numerous awards during his career with the USPTO, including the Bronze Medal Award for superior performance. Prior to joining the USPTO, he earned a J.D. from the University of Oregon and a Bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering from Mississippi State University.