The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will establish its new Southeast Regional Outreach Office at its Alexandria headquarters, reversing a previous decision to locate the facility in Atlanta, according to an announcement from the federal agency on June 6.
The USPTO had originally announced in December 2023 that it would launch the Southeast Regional Outreach Office in Atlanta in late 2025. However, the agency now says it “wants to begin serving the southeast region immediately from Alexandria.”
The decision aligns with the USPTO’s approach through its Northeast Regional Outreach Office, which was established in Alexandria in March 2024. The agency operates four other regional outreach offices in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, and San Jose.
The creation of the Southeast office stems from the Unleashing American Innovators Act of 2022, which was signed into law in December 2022 and mandated the establishment of additional regional offices to improve Americans’ access to USPTO services.
However, the location change has drawn sharp criticism from Georgia’s congressional delegation. Rep. Hank Johnson (GA-04), who serves as ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee overseeing the USPTO, led a bipartisan letter questioning the decision along with Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and several House colleagues.
In their June 24 letter to Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart, the lawmakers noted that when Atlanta was originally selected, the USPTO’s own press release praised the city’s “growing and diverse economy,” coupled with resources available to its “large number of startups and innovators” that “made it a top location for the Southeast Regional Office.”
The agency had also highlighted that Atlanta “has an active and highly ranked research development community with five Tier 1 research universities, one of the top-tier Veterans Administration research hospitals in the nation, and the Centers for Disease Control.”
The Georgia delegation argued that “while Alexandria, Virginia is in the southeast region of the country, Americans living there are already served by the USPTO headquarters” and that “regional patent offices allow the USPTO to reach Americans where they live and work.”
“The entire point of the Unleashing American Innovators Act was to increase participation in the patent system by women, people of color, military veterans, individual inventors, and other groups that are underrepresented in the system,” Johnson said. “Atlanta was rightfully chosen to be that hub because of our vibrancy, innovation and top-notch research institutions.”
The lawmakers criticized the USPTO’s reversal, writing that “Atlanta was chosen after an intensive process that invited public input. In contrast, the USPTO’s decision to ignore stakeholders and open the SEROO in Alexandria instead was made with no public explanation whatsoever.”
They have requested detailed responses from the USPTO by July 9 regarding the decision-making process and how the agency plans to serve the southeast region from Alexandria.
For Alexandria, the decision means the USPTO will continue to expand its presence in the city, building on its existing headquarters operations at 600 Dulany Street and the Northeast Regional Outreach Office already located there.
