Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross announced Tuesday that Laura Peter has joined the department as the deputy under secretary of Commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Ross noted that she will assume the position effective November 13, 2018. Peter comes into this position after most recently serving as deputy general counsel of A10 Networks, a company that specializes in application delivery controllers, distributed denial-of-service attack protection, DDoS attack mitigation, load balancer, and next-generation firewall solutions. “Laura Peter brings a breadth of experience and a deep understanding of intellectual property issues to her new role as deputy director of the USPTO,” said Sec. Ross in a statement. “She will be an asset to our administration as we look to increase reliability and balance in the intellectual property system, as well as provide more predictability so that businesses can grow and invest with confidence.”
