Week Three – Capstone Projects

Week three is here, and on Friday our students have their first real assignment due for the Capstone classes. The Capstone is a year-long project, in which the students end up having written a real, complete, hopefully fileable patent application. Being able to write a patent application is one of the bread-and-butter activities of a patent agent; and a real asset to prospective employers.

The students’ deliverable this week is to write a synopsis of the technology that they’ll be working on for the rest of the year, including a list of features that are potentially patentable. They will use the synopsis in their Capstone class, as they start to write claims for the invention; and for the Searching class that Ron is teaching, to determine what is actually patentable in the disclosure they’ve chosen. I’m looking forward to learning more about all of these exciting technologies, which have been kindly donated by ND professors!

Also this week, we hosted an Open House so next years’ prospective students can learn more about the MSPL. Tom Mauch and Mike Wack (our faculty teaching both semesters of Patent Law; patent attorney and patent agent at BioMet) were kind enough to join us. If you missed this one, we’ll be hosting a couple more Open Houses this semester: in Chicago on Nov. 7; and on campus on Nov. 11. RSVP to Cathi Kennedy (ckenned7@nd.edu) if you want to come to either one — dinner is provided!

I didn’t remember to take a photo during the Open House, but I took this photo afterward. I’m still learning how to use all of the fun features on a relatively recently new phone!

Goofing off after the Open House!
Goofing off after the Open House!

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