New Trademark App Open Source Code on Github
Tuesday, November 15, 2016 2:34 PM
Guest blog by Chief Technology Officer David Chiles
Improving the way the government delivers information technology (IT) solutions to its customers isn’t just a goal, it’s our mission. We at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office know that by publishing our open source code, the public can help us come up with new and better IT solutions. In advance of the new Federal Source Code Policy and in support of the Administration’s Open Government Initiative, we have been publishing content on Github for over a year, and it now includes source code for a mobile application for trademarks.
The new published source code on Github is for a sample application enabling a user to access and track the status of a trademark. This application enables the user to receive a push notification anytime the status of a trademark application changes. The idea for this app began with feedback from the leadership in Trademarks, and we believe that it will also be a useful tool for our own employees. We’re making our code for this application open to the public, so you can also use it in your own projects, improve it so it works best for you, or create an entirely new application.
Through our Open Data and Mobility Program, we’ve already made over 200 years of intellectual property information available to the public, and have published application program interfaces (APIs) so you can more easily search, use, and manipulate patent and trademark information. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to use our data.
As America’s Innovation Agency, we hope that our open source initiatives will spur innovation and create new ideas. We are looking to the public to come up with the next greatest idea, like we recently did through our Cancer Moonshot Challenge.
Let us know how you like our Trademark app, and keep an eye on our Github page as we’ll be publishing more and more open source projects.