Categories: Published Articles
      Date: Aug 13, 2018
     Title: Federico Award 2018

Federico Award 2018

Joshua Schwartz

The Federico Committee was privileged to present the 2018 Pasquale J. Federico Memorial Award to Teresa Stanek Rea during the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Patent and Trademark Office Society.

In 1993, the SOCIETY established the Pasquale J. Federico Memorial Award. The Federico Award is intended to recognize outstanding contributions to the Patent and Trademark Systems of the United States of America. It may be given to an individual, a group of individuals, a corporation or an institution. Awards to individuals may be made posthumously. No more than one award may be given in each year. Anyone may make a nomination. The award is named in honor of Pasquale J. (Pat) Federico who was an institution within the Patent and Trademark Office. Pat entered then Patent Office in 1923 as a junior examiner in Division 43. By 1935, he was the Assistant Chief of his division and he became the Division Chief in 1940. He was appointed to the Board of Appeals in 1947 and remained there until his retirement from the Office in 1977. Pat Federico was a prolific author of articles dealing with intellectual property. Perhaps his greatest achievement was writing the first draft of the 1952 Patent Act. He was also, according to Giles Rich, the man most responsible for getting the 1952 Patent Act through Congress and enacted into law. The first Federico Award was presented to the late Giles S. Rich, who had served on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and its predecessor court, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals for over four decades. Honorees from other years include Nick Godici, Paul Michel, Donald Banner, Charles E. Van Horn, Pauline Newman, C. Marshall Dann, Herbert Wamsley, Helen Wilson Nies, Mike Kirk, Tom Arnold, Howard T. Markey, Rene D. Tegtmeyer, Isaac Fleischmann, John Whealan, Anne Chasser, Raymond Chen, Bernie Knight, and Mark Lemley.

The 2018 Frederico Award was presented to Teresa Stanek Rea. Teresa (Terry) Rea is the former Acting and Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO. In this role, she was the chief intellectual property official in the United States Government responsible for implementing the America Invents Act, negotiating IP issues with international trading partners and managing all USPTO operations. Under her leadership, the Partnership for Public Service identified the USPTO as the #1 Best Place to Work in the federal government out of 300 sub-agencies.

100 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc’y 1(2018)

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