Q. Todd Dickinson poses at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1999. (Photo: ALM)

Q. Todd Dickinson, a former head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a fixture in the patent community for decades, died Sunday. He was 67.

At this time, the National Law Journal has not been able to confirm the cause of death.

Dickinson took over the reins of the USPTO as acting commissioner in 1998 following the departure of Bruce Lehman and held the top job permanently in 1999 and 2000. Among his achievements were helping get the American Inventor's Protection Act through Congress and helping prepare the consolidation of 18 offices into the agency's current Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters.

Perhaps more than that, said George Washington University law professor John Whealan, Dickinson helped guide the office along its transition as a branch of the Department of Commerce to a more independent entity that handled its own labor negotiations and contracting, while transforming the director position from relative obscurity to one sought after by law firm stars and Fortune 50 patent counsel.

"He came from nowhere," said Whealan, whom Dickinson hired as the office's solicitor. "I'm sure some people thought, 'Who was this guy?' He came in and he turned it around."

"He was a force to be reckoned with," said Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath partner Robert Stoll, who also worked with Dickinson at the PTO. "He knew patent law. He fought strenuously for the patent system. And he always had me laughing."

Dickinson studied chemistry at Allegheny College and got a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1977. He did patent prosecution as an associate at a small firm in Pittsburgh, then worked briefly in-house at a bio-pharma company.

He relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s to work for Chevron, where he began managing other attorneys. He also spent time working on the mayoral campaigns of now-Sen. Dianne Feinstein and John Molinari. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1990 to become chief patent counsel at Sun Company (now Sunoco), where he supervised a 50-attorney legal department. Eventually he joined the firm now known as Dechert and took much of Sun's work with him.

Dickinson was openly gay and served as chairman of the Philadelphia Attorneys for Human Rights for several years. He also worked on the finance committee of Rep. Chaka Fattah during three runs for Congress, and volunteered for then-Philadelphia Mayor (later Pennsylvania Gov.) Ed Rendell and Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.

Dickinson's predecessor, Lehman, had raised the PTO's profile but left it at something of a crossroads. His relationship toward the agency's unions had been antagonistic and the roles of solicitor and chief financial officer were vacant. Dickinson reorganized management with an emphasis on operational efficiency, and improved relations with labor, "which is a big deal given it was 80% of the office," Whealan says.

The PTO was transitioning at the time from a nuts-and-bolts prosecution office to more of a force on policy, legislation and increasing numbers of Supreme Court cases. During the Clinton administration, trademark applications nearly doubled and the number of patent applications increased by 70%, while at the same time the office—and its leader—was getting an unprecedented amount of public attention. "He was one of those people who rode that train, and was part of it," Whealan said.

The current PTO director, Andrei Iancu, said Dickinson had been at the forefront of modernizing the USPTO to make it more user friendly. "Under his leadership, the agency started accepting electronic filings and launched the now popular Patent Application Information Retrieval system (PAIR), which makes most patent filings available to the public electronically," Iancu said in a written statement. "He also was central in efforts to harmonize aspects of US and international patent law."

Iancu added that Dickinson "was a mentor, and he was a friend."

In a 2001 article, The Recorder suggested that Dickinson might be remembered as The Great Organizer.

"Probably the thing I'm most proud of is reorganizing and refocusing the management of the organization and identifying and recruiting senior-level managers," he said at the time.

But Dickinson was very involved in policy, as well. Whealan remembers Dickinson assigning him and Stephen Kunin, then the deputy commissioner for patent examination policy, different sides of an argument, so they could work through all the implications. Stoll said Dickinson personally negotiated details of the AIPA, which enacted a variety of reforms and safeguards, as it went through Congress. "I watched him do it," Stoll said. "He was passionate about the patent system."

Dickinson left the Patent Office in 2001 but never left IP. After a stint as co-chairman of Howrey's IP practice, Dickinson spent six years as executive director of the American Intellectual Property Law Association. "Even in his days at AIPLA, he was on The Hill and internationally working to improve the system," Stoll said

Following AIPLA (and rumors of a return to the PTO during the Obama administration, which didn't materialize), Dickinson practiced at Novak Druce Connolly Bove & Quigg and, since 2015, at Polsinelli.

On a trip to India about three years ago Dickinson became seriously ill and ultimately had to spend time in a wheelchair and on oxygen. He married his husband, Robert Atkins, while hospitalized, and eventually recovered, and the two bought a farm and had been living in Virginia.

Last year Dickinson testified before the Senate IP Subcommittee on Section 101 of the Patent Act. He'd also been teaching as adjunct faculty at The George Washington University.

Stoll said he'd been exchanging sporadic emails with Dickinson up to a few days ago. "You never got away with one email to Todd," he joked.

"He'd walk into a room," Whealan said, "and be the life of the party."