A post from student blogger Brittany
Sitting in our capstone class and Karen starts spewing deadlines for end of the semester assignments as we greet her with blank stares. My blank stare was due to the fact that unbeknownst to me, I had completely missed an entire aspect of technology regarding one of my capstone projects which meant I had to start from scratch writing a picture claim, my broad claim and my dependent claims. Luckily for me, we have spent so much time discussing drafting claims that I knew the exact approach I would need to take in order to complete all the assignments in a timely fashion.
The aforementioned happened because I had decided to reread the technology disclosure to ensure that I was drafting claims that covered the entire scope of the technology, and then it suddenly became painfully apparent that I was missing an entire claimset. As someone still very new to the field of patent law, I am not surprised that I missed a portion of the new technology. This issue made me realize that I must be be extremely meticulous in my approach to reading technology disclosures and although I am highly educated, I must gather information from the inventor in such a way they I may come across as annoying or lacking knowledge about the background of the disclosed technology. I would hope that this method of gathering essential information from the inventor would allow me to draft the most complete claimset as to appease both the client and the USPTO ( let’s be honest…..it’s pretty difficult to please those guys).
All in all I’m glad that I was able to identify and have time to correct my mistake in a timely manner because I would hate to get embarrassed at the capstone presentation by Karen and/or my inventor. These things and others will happen but pushing forward and getting as much hands-on experience will be the best way to learn from my mistakes. One of our professors once told us that it takes drafting at least 20 patent applications before you feel comfortable enough to determine whether you are good or bad at this patent stuff so I have a few more to go before I make that decision.