PIUG 2021 - Thursday (Biotech)

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PIUG 2021  BIOTECH DAY  Virtual Meeting

 T H U R S D A Y A F T E R N O O N 12 : 3 0 P M – 3 : 5 5 P M

USPTO’s Efforts Related to ST.26 Stefanos Karmis and Kathleen Kalafus (United States Patent and Trademark Office) 2:25 – 2:55 pm  ABSTRACT The goal of this presentation is to familiarize patent practitioners with the basics of WIPO ST.26 – the new sequence listing rules that will go into effect worldwide on January 1, 2022. Topics covered will include the benefits of ST.26, differences between ST.25 and ST.26, XML basics, the anatomy of an ST.26 XML sequence listing, and an introduction to the WIPO Sequence authoring tool.  BIOGRAPHIES Stefanos Karmis is the Director of the Office of Patent Quality Assurance (OPQA) where he is responsible for providing reliable and meaningful indicators of patent examination quality to identify quality trends and develop data-driven improvement strategies. Prior to this role, Stefanos served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Quality and the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy. In this role he led several initiatives to improve patent quality and further agency priorities and also engaged with external stakeholders and international offices. Stefanos began his career at the USPTO as a patent examiner in business methods and later became a supervisory patent examiner, managing patent examiners in various mechanical engineering technologies. Stefanos holds a J.D. from The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law and a B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech. Kathleen Kalafus is a member of the Scientific and Technical Information Center (STIC) where she provides subject matter expertise in the development of policies and IT systems for the processing and dissemination of biological sequence data. Kathleen has been a member of the USPTO ST.26 Task Force since 2014. In this role, she has worked closely with international partners to develop policies that will benefit IP Offices worldwide, as well as the scientific community. Kathleen began her career as a patent agent in a boutique IP law firm, drafting and prosecuting patent applications for a wide variety of biotech clients, with a particular emphasis on biologics and genetic engineering. Kathleen holds a PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Baylor College of Medicine and a B.S. in Biology from Cornell University.