Re: NEC-LIST: Patents

I had expected that the early unsubstantiated statements in this thread
would be seen by the knowledgeable for what they are. Now, I must offer
a
clarification.

Mr. Pender's impressive CV at
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mpender/resume.pdf
indicates that he is likely to be knowledgeable as he is a patent agent
and has graduated from law school. He is also founder of his own
company. After passing the bar exam and sending a notification to the
PTO, he will become a patent attorney. Thus his putative disparaging
statement about patent attorneys needs to be examined with care.

    When one examines the words he used, one sees that the statement is
not
at all necessarily disparaging of patent attorneys. The important part
is the qualifier "I've known." It may well be that Mr. Pender's ambit
of patent attorneys is not very large and thus his list of competent
patent attorneys is short. It may also be that every patent attorney of
his acquaintance is judged by him to be competent.

    I know a great many patent attorneys. I have yet to encounter one I
thought incompetent. Bar associations deal harshly with incompetence.
Individual patent attorneys have different interests.

    On another issue: What one wishes to patent needs to be novel (and
more, of course). Thus it is normal initially for the inventor to be
the only person who "knows" the invention. It is also normal for the
inventor to need to teach the patent attorney about the invention in
order for the patent attorney to be able to present the invention in the
manner necessary for receipt of a patent. Characterizing this normal
process as anything other than a symbiotic process is inappropriate.

    While most of my income comes from academic work, I am a patent
attorney and a professional engineer with a very small private practice.
Let us return to the subject matter of this great group.
            Mac

J. Mc Laughlin - Michigan USA

"M. Pender" <michael.pender_at_nanochron.com> writes:

<snip>

> I have been an electrical engineer for about fourteen years and a
patent
> agent/attorney for several years as well. During that time I worked
as a
> patent examiner for the patent office, and worked as an associate for
a big
> law firm in DC. And I can fit the names of every competent patent
attorney
> that I've known on a single 3" x 5" index card (maybe a match book if
I
> write small).
>
> You need to shop around. There's no substitute for putting in a
little
> effort to find somebody competent *before* you spend $$$ and months of
time
> trying to get a patent with an attorney who doesn't understand your
work.
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael Pender
>
> --

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