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Crystal Balls and Patent Analytics: Making Accurate Predictions in the Patent Process
Things might be different if we could see into the future. We would have notice of our future mistakes and could alter our actions to make the most of the days ahead. While there may not be a crystal ball that allows us to foresee the moments, months or years that lie...
The Queen’s Gambit: Making Small Upfront Sacrifices for Better Control of Patent Prosecution
There is an opening in chess called the “Queen’s Gambit” that contains a nugget of wisdom that applies to patent prosecution. In chess, a Queen’s Gambit involves sacrificing a queen-side pawn, which allows a player to secure control of the center of the board. In...
Myths of Litigated Patents
In the world of patent analytics, patent data serves two primary purposes. For one, it acts as a snapshot of the past, helping to show history in the form of patent statistics pertaining to the USPTO, patent examiners and patent applicants. The second key function of...
The Impact of Examiner Interviews on Patent Prosecution Outcomes
The value of holding USPTO examinter interviews with USPTO is often overlooked by patent professionals. When approached with a mindset of cooperativeness (as opposed to combativeness), examiner interviews enable more effective communication between patent...
The Hero’s Journey and the Four Champions of Patent Prosecution
Most people are familiar with the “hero’s journey.” Popularized by Joseph Campbell in the mid-twentieth century, it describes the common progression of the stages in literary or cinematic epics that our favorite heroes experience. There are 12 total stages in the...
Use Digital Briefcases for Patent Portfolio Analytics
When patent practitioners utilize patent portfolio management software the ways in which patent portfolios can be assembled and analyzed are practically endless. The LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent prosecution platform makes it easy for patent professionals to build...
Sophisticated Solutions for Patent Portfolio Management
The benefits of worldwide patent data and analytics are clear at every stage of the patent process. From helping patent prosecutors strategically draft patent application content to predicting a patent examiner’s next move in prosecution, having more information on...
Imagining More From USPTO Patent Statistics
The power of up-to-date, accurate USPTO patent statistics becomes apparent to many patent practitioners after only a short time in the trenches of patent prosecution. Having access to USPTO patent data and analytics features allows professionals to make more accurate...
Monitor Patent Applications and Portfolios From All Angles
A lot of time and energy is spent on patent monitoring. From monitoring for patent prosecution updates to monitoring the relative strength of patent portfolios over time, staying consistently up to date gives patent practitioners the power to keep their patent...
Take Control of the Patent Process
The patent process is rife with uncontrollable variables that are material to the outcome of patent prosecution—the most illustrative example is the predisposition of the patent examiner assigned to the case. The ability to manage and operate in uncertainty is a mark...
Five Election Patents that Shaped the Democratic Process
As great as the election processes of the United States are compared to those of many other nations, voting in the United States has always had room for improvement. Where there is room for improvement, innovation follows, and the five following United States Patent...
Insights From A Conversation With the USPTO Commissioner For Patents
Want some insider intel on what’s happening at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)? I recently had the opportunity to join a webinar panel with Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog® and leaders of the USPTO. We had an enlightening conversation with Drew Hirshfeld,...
A Conversation With the Commissioner for Patents: Part 1
If there is anything positive to say about the year 2020, it is that it has been a year of deep reflection with a desire to improve in all aspects of our lives. In the darkness of a global pandemic and a state of social unrest, opportunities have arisen to revise our...
Five Stages for Patent Efficiency
Patent applicants and professionals are in for the long haul when they enter patent prosecution, which typically unfolds over the course of several years. The silver lining of the lengthy patent process is that each subsequent stage presents an opportunity to use...
How to Easily and Objectively Prove Where Your Firm Outperforms the Competition
Market your firm to its fullest potential to prospective clients and earn more business from current clients with credible, third-party, objective data. Showcase your areas of expertise with the proprietary LexisNexis PatentAdvisor Efficiency Score™ and...
Patent Analytics for Predictions, Performance and Evaluations: Part 2
Click Here to Read Part One of This Series Patent analytics have opened the door for patent prosecutors and patent applicants to evaluate their patent examiners based on a variety of USPTO patent statistics. This allows them to develop superior patent prosecution...
How USPTO Examiner Type Affects Patents: Part 4
By Michael Sartori & Matt WelchLaw360 (August 21, 2020, 2:25 PM EDT)Patent procurement at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is affected by the type of examiner. We gathered data from the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor database for each year from 2009 to 2019, for...
Opportunities to Win with Patent Analytics
There are plenty of opportunities to win throughout the patent process. It begins with winning a potential client’s approval, and it hopefully ends with winning a granted patent and the client’s satisfaction. Along the way, everyone wins if prosecution goes smoothly...
Fast Examiners; Slow Examiners; and Patent Allowance
Although we know that individual patent examiners can greatly affect an inventor’s chance to (1) get a patent at all and (2) get it in a timely way, there has been very little work determining how examiners are able to either delay or compact prosecution while still...
Patent Analytics for Predictions, Performance and Evaluations
Patent analytics have opened up opportunities to implement patent prosecution strategies that greatly improve your chances of obtaining a patent in less time and at a lesser cost. We continue to make great strides in optimizing those strategies with the development of...
Market Your Firm to its Fullest Potential with the New LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® Benchmarking Reports™
Market your firm to its fullest potential to prospective patent clients and earn more business from current patent clients with credible, third-party, objective data. Showcase your areas of expertise with the proprietary LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® Efficiency...
Patent Prosecution Costs: Strategies for Getting Better Patents for Less
Technology is wonderful when it saves you money, and the patent process is ripe with inefficiencies that can be treated with patent data and analytics. Based on our past webinar titled “Reducing Patent Prosecution Costs Using Patent Analytics,” here are a few ways you...
How USPTO Examiner Type Affects Patents: Part 2
By Michael Sartori & Matt WelchLaw360 (June 16, 2020, 12:13 PM EDT)Patent procurement at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is affected by the type of examiner. We gathered data from the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor database for each year from 2009 to 2019, for...
How Classification Works at the USPTO: Targeted Drafting to Influence Prosecution Outcomes
“Targeted drafting”—drafting a patent application to place it into a specific art unit—is possibly the most important part of patent prosecution strategies that few patent practitioners think about. Every patent application’s assignment to a USPTO art unit is a...
Overcoming Patent Examiner Variability: Three Key Takeaways
Understanding how the patent process works, all the way down to the level of individual behaviors, opens up so many opportunities for better patent prosecution outcomes. USPTO patent data and analytics allow us to not only see the variability in the behaviors of...
Win New Business with the PatentAdvisor Efficiency Score™
Patent data and analytics now play an important role in helping law firms win new business. Firms can now quantify their performance against the patent office using USPTO patent data, and highlight their most favorable patent metrics to earn a prospective clients...
Evaluating Outside Legal Counsel: Best Methods
Companies and their in-house counsel face many challenges when working with outside legal counsel. To begin with, choosing the right patent law firm to work with is trickier than one might expect. Not only do law firms often specialize in a specific field or...
Patent Issuance: A Road Map to Success
There is no doubt that patent professionals gain a better understanding of patent examiners as they interact with them over time—they learn how to more effectively read and interact with the individuals who will eventually cast judgment on their patent applications....
How USPTO Examiner Type Affects Patents
By Michael Sartori & Matt WelchOriginally published on Law360.comMichael Sartori, a partner, and Matt Welch, an associate at Baker Botts, LLP used data from LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® to complete an analysis on ten years of examiner data from the eight non-design...
The Medical Ventilator Market and Patent Protection
A major contributor to the severity of the COVID-19 crisis is that medical providers simply do not have enough ventilators to meet current patient needs. Individuals with COVID-19 who develop breathing difficulties often rely on mechanical assistance to receive the...
Patent prosecution is the process of drafting, filing, and working with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to establish a patent protection over the rights to a unique invention.
Patent prosecution begins with a unique idea or design. The inventor can then search through databases of accepted, pending, and rejected patents to learn how their idea compares to what is already available. This research stage allows for the inventor to find out if a patent for a similar product already exists. It can also help the inventor discern what distinguishes their product from previous products.
For a patent to be filed and continue to move through the process, it must be drafted with complete, detailed information regarding the invention and claims. A picture of the design is almost always needed. When the draft is ready, it can be submitted to the patent office as an official application.
A patent examiner will start by verifying that the patent application meets all the criteria to be considered for patentability. This can include originality, meeting formalities, and ensuring the claims are patentable. The examiner will then move to prior art research, similar to the inventor’s initial stage. The examiner will thoroughly research all previous patents to ensure the application does not match anything already approved.
The examiner and the applicant may interact throughout the process to better understand the application and advance the prosecution. Finally, the examiner will approve, reject, or object to the patent application. The examiner will provide information on why the decision was made, and provide further feedback on how to move forward and what to amend. This can be in the form of an office action, which requires the applicant to create a response in order to continue moving forward with the application.
Our suite of products helps you through every step of the patent prosecution process.