Overnight, as the federal government shutdown officially began, another federal closure was announced: the Denver office of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The Rocky Mountain Regional Outreach Office, which opened in the city in 2014, came out of the America Invents Act in 2011 as the federal agency targeting inventors and innovation and moved to expand outside of the Washington, D.C., area to connect inventors and patent filers to the USPTO, as well as improve patent examiner retention.

Few details were shared in a news release Wednesday announcing the closure, but the agency said that a “typical regional office requires more than $1 million of leased office space and overhead expenses,” and that the Denver office employee count had dropped to “less than 10,” at the end of last ye

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