Practical Tips for Patent Drafting

Doing the Patent Interview

I have been developing my inventor interview over several years, and I have a technique that seems to work for me.

The key is to know what the inventor wants.

There are many strategies and situations where slowing down the patent from issuing is an enormous benefit to the client. Personally, I take a very proactive approach to making the patent issue as late as possible where this is needed, such as filing a provisional application. I could not bear the thought of writing a sloppy patent application or intentionally filing claims are ambiguous or need a lot of work to clean up. I think it is reprehensible to intentionally and needlessly drag out prosecution by filing endless responses to Office actions, because it lines the pockets of the attorney without benefiting the client. I do think there are legitimate, low cost mechanisms that can extend the prosecution time to help the client get the most protection for the money spent.

How to Speed Up A Patent

In order to speed up issuance, the patent may be filed as a non-provisional application right away. This gets the application into the queue at the patent office first.

Even though the examiners are supposed to take the applications in order, every examiner has some discretion on which ones they handle. In order to get the application through quickly, the patent attorney should draft the application with the examiner in mind.

Designing a Patent Strategy

To a very large extent, a patent attorney can craft a strategy for a patent that aligns with the business goals of a client. From my experience, very few patent attorneys/agents bother with such things, but it can make a very big difference, especially in some business situations.

BlueIronIP is a patent financing group that specializes in patent strategies for startups and medium sized businesses. BlueIronIP uses a “patent due diligence” process to determine the best strategy for your business, as well as to evaluate individual inventions.

Claiming Strategy for a Patent in Real Business Applications

One of my clients was complaining about how difficult and expensive their last patent was when it was handled by a big firm. Sadly, this is not an uncommon story, where the inventor had to suffer through several revisions of the initial application because it was technically incorrect and was missing many essential elements of the invention.

The problem was exacerbated when the response to an Office action was handed off to someone unfamiliar with the case, and the inventor essentially did all the background work to present their case to the Examiner. Oh, and by the way, over $180,000 was spent prosecuting the patent. (The Big Firm billed by the hour, too.)

Not only is this story one of utter incompetence, clearly excessive billing, but it is one of poor claiming strategy.