The Twentieth Annual Patent Prosecution Boot Camp is underway just now in Philadelphia. I have the honor to serve on a faculty with thirty-six other extremely experienced practitioners who spend their own money for air travel and hotels, and of course they take a hit on their professional billings for a couple of travel days as well as the teaching day. Decades ago, when I had the good fortune that my employer paid for it, I attended a similar seminar organized by the Practicing Law Institute. And as I sat there in the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan those decades ago I lacked even a bit of a clue as to the economic hit being taken by astonishing generosity of the faculty members. I learned so much, and even now from time to time I make use of this or that nugget of practitioner wisdom that someone passed along during that seminar, so many years ago. As just one example if I manage now to draft a decent patent claim, the earliest credit goes to Evelyn Sommer (1925-2016), who taught one of the small-group claim-drafting classes at that seminar.
The only thing one can do is to try, of course, to pay it forward as best we can, and I expect that is exactly why the thirty-six other faculty members are there just like me.
The Boot Camp started yesterday morning and will finish tomorrow. I am headed to Philadelphia now, and my segment (yeah, take a guess, it is about the Patent Cooperation Treaty!) will be tomorrow.
Who taught you how to draft a patent claim? Will you give that person some credit in a comment below?
Allen Krass— a patient trainer of many of the Detroit area’s finest patent attorneys! Also, Dick Hoffman.
Bob Gnuse and Chico Gholz.
Myron (“Mike”) Cohen (Of blessed memory) – one of the greats!
I learned mostly from the peerless Louis Knobbe, one of the founders of the firm now known as Knobbe Martens. His partners at the time, Don Martens, Gordon Olson, and the late Jim Bear, also contributed greatly to my training as a patent prosecutor. In later years, I was a claim drafting instructor for Irving Kayton, founder of PRG, before the PTO eliminated claim drafting from the registration exam.