State officials have a novel idea: open a regional branch of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in Hawai'i.

The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism Thursday presented the idea to visiting USPTO officials. The meeting was proposed by DBEDT, and not by patent officials who were in Hawai'i on other business.

"What we did was try to get on the radar screen with them," said Steve Bretschneider, DBEDT's chief marketing officer. "We thought this was an opportunity to tell them Hawai'i would be a great place to locate a regional patent office."

Hawai'i's geographic location between the Mainland and Asia makes it an ideal location for a patent branch office or as a location for patent examiner recruiting and training, Bretschneider said. In addition, "We felt that Hawai'i is a special place and people who are from here would like to stay here if they could, which would lead to higher retention rates," he said.

Bretschneider acknowledged that any effort to create a Hawai'i patent office branch would be a long slog that would require a patent office policy change and possibly even a Congressional appropriation. The patent office currently does not operate regional branches.

"The impression I got is they're reviewing all their options," Bretschneider said of the response to the idea from patent officials.

Patent activity can be a barometer for an area's ability to innovate. However, Hawai'i, with its tourism/agriculture-based economy, generates relatively few patents.

Only recently has the state begun to diversify into more innovative fields such as biotech, information technology and telecommunications.

Hawai'i ranked 47th among the 50 states in patents issued per 1 million people, according to a report released in 2006 by the Corporation for Enterprise Development.

However, Hawai'i inventors were involved in 137 patents granted last year — the most in at least 10 years, according to Patent and Trademark Office data.

Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com.