The Effects of Efficient Patent Drafting
Patent prosecution is a marathon that demands quality performance every step of the way. The way patent professionals approach the many hours they spend on patent searches, prior art analyses, and patent application drafting has implications that can last for years throughout the patent process and the life of a patent. Striking a balance between providing efficient patent drafting services while maintaining quality is one of the best ways to ensure the satisfaction of your clients and a smooth patent prosecution journey.
Efficient Patent Drafting: Pre-Filing Optimization
Patents are complex documents. They are often highly technical, made up of many parts and sections that reference each other, making them difficult to digest without giving them adequate time and attention. Patent applications should be drafted meticulously to avoid mistakes because even small drafting errors can end up being very expensive to resolve. However, because of their complex nature, it can require significant time and money to review patent drafts before they are submitted to the patent office. Often, patent professionals must use their best judgment to limit the billable time they spend on perfecting their patent drafts while doing their best to avoid mistakes that lead to greater expense down the road.
The LexisNexis PatentOptimizer® patent drafting tool helps patent professionals conduct thorough, efficient patent drafting with cost-effective reviews and analyses of their patent applications in less time than if the reviews were conducted manually. PatentOptimizer® can serve as a critical quality control check while also enabling patent drafters to develop concise, and well-tailored patent applications. More than just a tool to correct spelling and grammatical errors, PatentOptimizer can evaluate claims, identify when applications lack antecedents or support in patent drawings or descriptions, and check the accuracy of a patent application’s reference figures, related part numbers, and labels. Users can even use PatentOptimizer to automatically populate their information disclosure statement forms with information from the USPTO databases based solely on a list of document numbers. With efficient and effective patent review tools, patent professionals can ensure high-quality patent documents at the time of filing and avoid unnecessary correspondence with their patent examiners.
Efficient Patent Drafting and Responding: Office Actions and Downstream Savings
When a patent examiner issues an office action that rejects or objects to a patent application, it costs patent clients an average of $3,000 to have patent professionals respond to the office action and rebut the examiner’s arguments. The cost of an office action response, of course, depends on both the quantity and types of issues that are raised by the patent examiner. Many issues can be avoided by using PatentOptimizer to review patent application drafts, which can help to reduce the costs of office actions or avoid them completely. However, there may be substantive issues (i.e., issues regarding patentability) that simply cannot be remedied in the drafting stage.
The PatentOptimizer Office Action Response (OAR) tool helps patent professionals create effective responses to office actions while reducing the amount of time spent developing arguments in their favor. The OAR tool reviews a user’s office action and then searches U.S. patent office archives for arguments submitted by other applicants that successfully overcame similar rejections. Users are then provided with sample arguments they can consider using to overcome their own rejections, and they can even use the OAR tool to produce a first draft outline of their office action response in less time and with less expense.
There are opportunities to operate more efficiently before and after a patent application is submitted to the patent office. Whether helping to avoid rejections or respond to them effectively, PatentOptimizer helps patent professionals with efficient patent drafting while keeping costs down for their clients.
Additional Resources:
- Learn more about PatentOptimizer.
- See how to Create High-Quality Patent Applications with LexisNexis® PatentOptimizer®.
- Explore how to reduce costs by investing in patent quality with efficient patent drafting.
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