The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that provides patent and trademark protection to inventors and businesses for their inventions and corporate and product identification.
The mission of the PTO is to promote "industrial and technological progress in the United States and strengthen the national economy by:
Administering the laws relating to patents and trademarks.
... role is that of the cranky professor forced to stay immobile because of a broken leg in 1942's The Man Who Came to Dinner[?], which he had performed onstage before ...