Patents and Trademarks
Dear Readers,
When I first started working with patents and trademarks the most important skill I learned was finishing by a deadline. Patents and trademarks are all about deadlines. There are filing days, office action response times, multiple maintenance fee dates, and additional applications for hong kong. Sometimes it gets very confusing. And even one confused day could cost a client a patent or trademark. Typically I work updating 20 or so patents. The 20 patents each have multiple response deadlines. And because they do not start at the same time, patents and trademarks sometimes have deadlines months apart. It is important to keep track and record of each patent throughout the process.
The one skill every patent and trademark lawyer has is that they are organized. When I first started work, I was astonished that two patents can start the same date. But one would undergo numerous revisions and become even years behind the second. A patent could be published in half a year. However, most stay in the safe confines of our storage cabinets for some time. Some of the files I am currently working on date back to 1996 because maintenance fees need to be paid.
The other thing I really enjoy about patents is the shear diversity of the people who apply for them. Some are individuals, others are billion dollar companies. The two files on my desk couldn’t be more different. One is a trademark from a huge company, the other is a patent from an individual inventor. Yet, here they are in the same docket.
I will try to add more New York City attractions.
New York City!!!
I'll post more later!