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. As Director of the USPTO, he is responsible for administering the laws relevant to granting patents and trademarks, and the day-to-day management of the agency's $1.3 billion budget and 7,000 employees.

As head of the world's leading intellectual property office, Mr. Dudas is focused on funding and implementing the agency's 21st Century Strategic Plan to ensure that the USPTO continues to provide American innovators the patent and trademark systems they need to remain competitive around the world.

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

External links

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