Hope C. Shimabuku

As Regional Director of the Southwest Office of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Hope led the agency’s regional operations and worked with inventors, entrepreneurs, businesses, attorneys, and other stakeholders. She advised senior leadership and external stakeholders on legal and policy issues involving AI, data protection, digital services, emerging technologies, technology transfer, and governance frameworks for technology-enabled services. Hope led approximately 3,000 outreach events serving more than 100,000 stakeholders, often speaking at conferences and related events on a weekly basis, and has engaged with the USPTO’s Patent Public Advisory Committee and Trademark Public Advisory Committee.

Before joining the USPTO, Hope served as vice president and corporate counsel with a corporation that provided business process solutions, including managed print, information technology (IT), customer care, transportation, digital data and healthcare administrative solutions. She managed IP and technology due diligence for mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures involving transactions exceeding $1 billion. Hope also led legal support for complex commercial and technology-services agreements involving software and hardware development, shared services, procurement, licensing, nondisclosure agreements, and other technology-enabled transactions. Her work included advising business leaders on IP, software licensing, data use, risk allocation, integration, and technology-protection strategies.

Earlier in her career, Hope worked as a senior licensing attorney with a global telecommunications and wireless data technology company. There, she negotiated software licensing, procurement, and technology agreements and supported matters involving cybersecurity, standards setting, technology regulation, and cross-border operations in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America. She also managed patent enforcement and litigation matters globally in collaboration with outside counsel and internal business stakeholders. Hope began her legal career in private practice, where she prepared and prosecuted design, provisional, and nonprovisional patent applications and advised on patent, trademark, copyright, licensing, and infringement matters. Her patent prosecution experience expands to technologies involving computer hardware and software, computer networking, electronics, telecommunications, mechanical systems, and packaging technology. Notably, Hope’s legal perspective is informed by her prior engineering and business experience. Before entering the legal profession, she worked as a project manager at multinational technology company and as a quality manager and process engineer at multinational consumer goods corporation.

A recognized leader in the IP and legal communities, Hope has chaired the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of Texas; served as president of the Dallas Asian American Bar Association; and held leadership roles with the USPTO Network of Executive Women; Chiefs in Intellectual Property (ChiPs); the Dallas Bar Association; the Dallas Diversity Task Force; and several law school advisory boards.