The Patent Pen
Welcome to The Patent Pen, my musings on the patent world - the result of over 30 years of experience as an Israeli patent attorney.
“Patents are hard to read”. “I had an invention and filed a patent application, but I can’t understand the document my patent attorney prepared.”
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Sound familiar? Most patent attorneys consider this acceptable. After all, in order to broadly claim the invention, they need to describe the invention in the broadest terms possible and this is more important than that the document be easy to read.
I disagree. I believe that you can achieve a broad description of an invention with clear writing. My goal has always been to write, not to the Examiner, but to the future judge and jury of the issued patent. The judge and jury are intelligent people, but they are rarely “skilled in the art”. They don’t know the field of the invention, so they need some introductory explanation before delving into the invention and its details. I call this “providing context to the invention”.
At Heidi Brun Associates, we strive to write patent applications that our inventors can approach and understand. For many years, that was my goal. But, over the years, I have found myself giving lots of little lectures on my view of the patent world – where to file, how to strategize, how to handle the side issues that come up (like employees who leave, changes of ownership, tax issues, etc), software patentability. I also find myself expounding on the broader issues of women in science, patents in history, how being a patent attorney has affected my views on the world and more.
My name is Heidi Brun and my blog will cover all of these concepts.
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