The federal agency in charge of protecting inventions and intellectual property only recently agreed to open a satellite office in Detroit. Two more offices will open soon and California's federal lawmakers want to make sure the 500 high-paying engineering jobs land in California.
San Diego's three Republican and two Democratic congressional members support the idea. Monday was the deadline for submitting written remarks.
California's state government says the office should come here because a quarter of all patents issued in 2010 came from California. That was more than 30,000 patents.
Locating a patent office here could greatly reduce the number of trips the federal agency's Virginia office, saving California companies a lot of money.
Boston, Denver and Las Vegas are among the cities hoping to land one of the new offices.
