Last week, the Sc[i]³ Support Group, set up to support the patent library and find a way to maintain it, sent out donation letters to South Bay companies with interests in patents and trademarks. Mikio Ishimaru, chair of the Support Group, said the group needs to round up some $100,000 worth of pledges in order to present an acceptable plan to the city council. On Feb. 9 Ishimaru began meeting with firms to find donors. At this time, the group is only looking for pledges because it still needs council approval. Sc[i]³ is still a city program.

On March 29 the council will take one final look at Sc[i]³, and if council members decide Ishimaru and his colleagues have a viable plan they will approve it. If not, the council will end the subsidy and Sc[i]³ will close

"We needed to find out exactly what the situation was with the city and the funding for Sc[i]³ to find out what exactly we needed to do to ensure the future of Sc[i]³ ," Ishimaru said. "What we found was that there is not a really good fit between Sc[i]³ and the city of Sunnyvale in the library situation."

To promote innovation, Sunnyvale opened a Patent and Trademark Depository Library in 1963 and ran it through the Sunnyvale Public Library.

In 1994, the city joined efforts with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in an attempt to run programs that could pay for the depository library. That partnership became the Sunnyvale Center for Innovation, Invention and Ideas, popularly known as Sc[i]³ (pronounced sigh-three).

For 12 years, Sc[i]³ has given visitors access to patent and trademark information, seminars on intellectual property and procedures and other resources related to patents and trademarks.

But after years of subsidization by the city, the council decided it was a financial strain that the city could not handle. On Oct. 19, 2004, the city council voted 4­2 to close Sc[i]³ in 12 weeks.

A week later—after an outpouring of support from the community—the council voted to hold one last hearing on the issue, and on Nov. 9, Sc[i]³ earned a temporary stay of execution when Ishimaru stepped forward to champion the rescue.

A major key in that rescue may be moving the patent library to another location. Ishimaru says he wants to continue the professional relationship with Sunnyvale, but a more independent, business-like approach is needed to keep Sc[i]³ alive for the long run.

"We want to continue our relationship with Sunnyvale, to keep promoting the city as the heart of Silicon Valley," Ishimaru said.

One problem with having Sc[i]³ in the Sunnyvale Public Library is that it is subject to the library's hours of operation. Ishimaru said a number of clients left Sc[i]³ because it simply was not open early enough for their use.

One possible location is the Cogswell Polytechnical College campus in Sunnyvale, near the intersection of Highways 101 and 237.

Ishimaru said there is a large library on the campus, which could house the patent library and offer access at better hours than the Sunnyvale library. In addition, because the college has extensive computer classes, there is ample room to provide filing and other computer-oriented courses.

Ishimaru said the Board of Directors at Cogswell came to him with that idea, but because Sc[i]³ is still awaiting council the council's decision, all of these plans are just that—plans.

The $100,000 that Ishimaru said the program needs would be enough to move the library to another location and upgrade its existing technology—which is close to 15 years old. Some of that money could also be spent making the library self-sufficient by starting programs that people would pay to enroll in, as the library does to a smaller degree now.

"It takes money to make money, so we'd like to be able to hire some people to run our programs and start offering some training," he said. "We want to build something that will do more than just survive, something that will flourish."