Part II:
Patent prosecution, from the inventor or applicant’s perspective, can be scary. Their patent application, which they have probably spent a lot of money to have prepared, isn’t going to become a patent after all??!!
That’s not necessarily the case, though — as mentioned in Part I, it’s quite frequent that an applicant gets a rejection for a good reason!
Here’s where a good patent agent or attorney is invaluable. The rejection will be made in highly legal and technical terms — and the patent agent or attorney will know how to rebut the rejection appropriately. They’ll be able to throw the legal and technical jargon right back at the Examiner and blow his or her argument to bits (formally known as “overcoming the rejection”).
These skills aren’t something you just pick up — the MS in Patent Law teaches our students how to systematically approach rejections from the Patent Office, so they can help inventors get patents.