Deborah Cohn is currently serving as the esteemed Commissioner for Trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

She is the principal advisor on trademark matters to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Commissioner Deborah Cohn is in charge of domestic and international trademark registration policy and procedures. She oversees the trademark examination and registration operations for the agency and decides a wide range of legal examination issues, She also played a key role in implementing a new telework program that has been widely recognized in the federal government..

Commissioner Deborah Cohn’s most important career achievement was the implementation and development of the USPTO’s first telework program in 1997. She was able to convince agency executives to implement a pilot telework program at time when telework was not considered the norm in the public or private sector. She received the Telework Driver Award and the Presidential Rank Award to mark the successful program’s tenth anniversary in 2007. “It is an honor for me to recognize Deborah Cohn, Deputy Commissioner for Trademark Operations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO, for her leadership in promoting government telework,” Representative Thomas M. Davis told Congress. “Telework offers a great opportunity for the Federal Government to help solve environmental, traffic, and possibly continuity-of-operations issues, especially on the busy highways of Northern Virginia. It is well known that the Federal Government lags behind the private sector in providing telework options for its workforce. Yet, USPTO has set itself apart with its telework program.”

Commissioner Deborah Cohn came to the USPTO shortly after receiving her law degree in 1982, and has been there ever since. She began as a Trademark Examining Attorney, and has also been a Managing Attorney, a Group Director, the Acting Chief Administrative Officer, and Deputy Commissioner for Trademark Operations.

Commissioner Deborah Cohn says that she was drawn to trademark law while she was still in law school. “I’d always been interested in public service, and admired people working in it, and government service and trademarks together seemed like a perfect match.” She interviewed for a USPTO opening, “and was lucky enough to get hired straight out of law school.” And the rest, she says, is history.

About: Commissioner Deborah Cohn developed the Trademark Work At Home program in 1997 while working for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.