Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter V who wrote (230058)	11/23/2009 10:22:05 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 306849

Most of what I know comes from the School of Hard Knocks (I started my engineering career in machine vision/robotics at the time Lemelson was making a pain of himself), and this: nolo.com What you need to remember is that you know your invention far better than the Patent Attorney's intern, and you don't need to pay him $400/hr to write a poor patent for you. After rewriting the interns version a few times, it dawned on me I could better do without them, if I knew a little more about the legalese. I primarily use patents as a means of disclosing what is (or should be) prior art, hence not patentable by trolls. The standard practice is to cite as little prior art as possible, to enhance the chances of obtaining a patent. Its double edged, because if you fail to cite prior art, and the examiner fails to find it, the patent can get overturned on reexamination. But in practice an issued patent is 9/10'th of the law just like possession is. Again, the courts are changing this now. So I do a detailed job on the prior art, simply to remove as much as possible from future patentable variations. I show how as many pieces as I can find have been disclosed, and state as many of the "obvious" combinations as I can think of. This gets it on record. In some cases, as many of my drawings are on the prior art as on my own invention. And then I make sure to cite various other patents which should not have been issued if the prior art had been correctly cited. One of the problems in forcing a reexamination is that you can't argue your case. All you can do is submit a list of documents which the examiner should look at, but you CANNOT explain what parts of the document the examiner should consider in detail, or HOW he should piece together bits of prior art from several sources. Its a preemptive strategy that precludes unwarranted patents from being issued in the areas I care about. It still grates me that I have to do this.