Robert Hayes is a Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He is also currently serving as the Acting Chief AI Officer and Acting Chief Data Officer for the USPTO.
As Acting Chief AI Officer and Acting Chief Data Officer, Mr. Hayes leads the USPTO’s enterprise AI and data strategy to elevate examination quality, modernize patent and trademark operations, grow department revenue, and inform U.S. and international intellectual property policy. He oversees responsible AI deployment—including examiner copilots, AI-assisted prior art discovery, automated classification and translation, and model risk management—and directs the Office’s data program covering governance, interoperability, privacy and security, and analytics. Mr. Hayes works across Commerce bureaus and with federal partners, the tech industry, and academia to advance IP-safe generative AI workflows and establish best practices that position the USPTO as America’s innovation agency.
Across his career at X (formerly Twitter), Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal, NBCUniversal, and HBO, Mr. Hayes has driven complex change management and end-to-end transformation—aligning people, processes, data, and technology to deliver positive, measurable outcomes. He is known for translating early adoption of emerging technologies into market advantage, operational efficiency, and new revenue growth—from modernizing platforms and data pipelines to launching AI-enabled products and go-to-market motions.
Mr. Hayes is a graduate of American University's Kogod School of Business, with an MBA in International Business.