Mr. Hirabayashi has been with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) since 1983. He is the manager of the Patent Technology Monitoring Division (PTMD) at USPTO (formerly known as Technology Assessment and Forecast Branch or TAF). The division is responsible for producing many of the general patent activity statistics reports disseminated by USPTO including the various TAF database reports that are made available via the USPTO Internet site. In addition, the division produces several specialized patent activity reports under an arrangement with the National Science Foundation. The division maintains the TAF database that contains selected bibliographic data relating to U.S. patents granted since 1963 and that enables PTMD to profile patent activity by factors such as country of origin, technology, and assigned owner.
Mr. Hirabayashi joined PTMD in 1989 as an analyst after working briefly as a patent examiner and then, for six years, as a patent classifier on projects and issues relating to identifying, defining, and categorizing technology at USPTO. He has a B.A. degree in Physics from Franklin and Marshall College, a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, and an M.B.A. degree in Corporate Finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining the USPTO, Mr. Hirabayashi worked as an emissions research engineer at Ford Motor Company and as a project analyst at International Business Machines Corporation. Mr. Hirabayashi is a participating member in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Task Force on Patent Statistics.