Nick Oettinger is the Acting Chief Advisor for the USPTO, supporting the Office of the Undersecretary and the agency as a whole on a wide variety of policy and legal matters.
Mr. Oettinger previously served as the USPTO’s Senior Counsel for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of General Law. He led a team that advised on a wide range of topics, including rulemaking, legislation, administrative law, fiscal law, and ethics-related matters. As Senior Counsel, Mr. Oettinger advised agency leadership on fiscal and appropriations law, USPTO’s authority to use its fees, and to conduct fee setting rulemaking. He has led teams that worked on all of the agency’s significant rulemakings since 2014.
Mr. Oettinger joined the Office of General Law in 2010 as an Associate Counsel after eight years in private practice in California. As a partner in the Los Angeles office of an international law firm, he specialized in commercial litigation, primarily related to the healthcare industry and federal regulations governing airports. In 2014, Mr. Oettinger was promoted to Senior Counsel for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs.
Mr. Oettinger holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science, magna cum laude, from Amherst College and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where he was Senior Articles Editor for the Berkeley Technology Law Journal.