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1 hour ago, markstanco said:

Anybody else know one? And to be precise on what it is, it is for a combination of a flame resistant fabric I have added an aluminized coating to for foundry applications.

Great, so the foundry workers don't die in the flames but they all get Alzheimer's disease by age 40.

</ have spent a lot of time in giant steel foundries and they are awesome>

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Hey, @markstanco, sorry.  My inbox seems to be borked.  My client is in the flame retardant fabric biz, among others.

I recommend these guys, http://griggslaw.com/ in Dallas. 

I know them to be competent and not super-expensive.  I imagine they will give you the option of doing a patent search by a pro searcher before filing anything.  I recommend that you do that.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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9 minutes ago, markstanco said:
11 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:
What city are you in?

Not sure how this matters. But got one.

Well, it matters if you want to have any face to face meetings with your patent attorney without traveling.  Glad you found someone.

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On 4/10/2019 at 11:21 AM, markstanco said:

Anybody here a patent lawyer?  Need something in the textile industry patented. Should be a pretty easy one. 

I may be late to the thread, but I'm a patent attorney in Austin.

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  • 1 year later...
1 minute ago, Bevo said:

I knew a pretty hot EE girl who went to work for Arnold White & Durkee after graduating from UT. She's probably old and not good looking and not wild anymore.

That is a pretty small universe, particularly considering the mention of AWD, which was before the explosion of IP lawyers, which now include more than a handful of relative hotties.  Relatively few with EE degrees.

 Amber Hatfield? 

She's been through several other husbands and law firms and is now a Patent Trial and Appeal Board judge.   Amber L. Hagy.

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10 hours ago, Bevo said:

Wow, that is some pretty impressive sleuthing. You must KNOW her.

It's a small world, pretty damned small back then.  She was a year ahead of me in law school, didn't know her in undergrad.

Supposedly, Mr. Hatfield was a plumber or some sort of blue collar worker.  I more knew OF her.  She did not have a party rep in law school.

On the smallness of the world.  My first boss/mentor was licensed to practice at the PTO in 1963 with a registration number in the low 20,000s.  I was registered to practice 30 years later and given a sequential number in the mid-30,000s.  Now, the registration numbers are in the 90,000s or higher.

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12 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's a small world, pretty damned small back then.  She was a year ahead of me in law school, didn't know her in undergrad.

Supposedly, Mr. Hatfield was a plumber or some sort of blue collar worker.  I more knew OF her.  She did not have a party rep in law school.

On the smallness of the world.  My first boss/mentor was licensed to practice at the PTO in 1963 with a registration number in the low 20,000s.  I was registered to practice 30 years later and given a sequential number in the mid-30,000s.  Now, the registration numbers are in the 90,000s or higher.

My roommate at Parapet (W. Campus) was an EE.  At the same complex there were a bunch of guys who were EEs and one ChemE who all went to high school at Spring Westfield. I knew her through them. I then saw her a few more times when I worked with AWD to patent some bio stuff. It's kind of funny in that I remember her being pretty back then but I have a hard time remembering what she looked like. For whatever reason (I guess time) the Linked In pic didn't really jog my memory.

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It takes a year minimum, more likely 18 months or two years or longer, to obtain a patent.  Assuming one is even filed after doing a search.
Averaging less than a year from filing to a notice of allowance on Track 1 cases. Examiners as a whole are more reasonable under Iancu.
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4 minutes ago, APMP said:
On 8/14/2020 at 12:05 PM, TwiceHorn said:
It takes a year minimum, more likely 18 months or two years or longer, to obtain a patent.  Assuming one is even filed after doing a search.

Averaging less than a year from filing to a notice of allowance on Track 1 cases. Examiners as a whole are more reasonable under Iancu.

I have never used a petition to make special or an accelerated track in nearly 30 years (I think I did for an elderly inventor once or twice).  My original mentor suggested that when you seek "special" treatment, you often get it and I have lived by that maxim this whole time. Nor are my clients usually willing to pay for it.

I have had cases come through in under a year, though.  And recently got a first action in three months after filing!!!11! In an art unit that is fairly busy and usually typically slow.  In order not to bog it down, I interviewed the guy and he talked really fast, kind of spastic, so it sort of made sense.

Iancu has really been a breath of fresh air.  It's hard to believe he's a Trump appointee.  Big Tech has done incalculable damage to the patent system

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I have never used a petition to make special or an accelerated track in nearly 30 years (I think I did for an elderly inventor once or twice).  My original mentor suggested that when you seek "special" treatment, you often get it and I have lived by that maxim this whole time. Nor are my clients usually willing to pay for it.
I have had cases come through in under a year, though.  And recently got a first action in three months after filing!!!11! In an art unit that is fairly busy and usually typically slow.  In order not to bog it down, I interviewed the guy and he talked really fast, kind of spastic, so it sort of made sense.
Iancu has really been a breath of fresh air.  It's hard to believe he's a Trump appointee.  Big Tech has done incalculable damage to the patent system
You are basically guaranteed a first action in 3-5 months under Track 1. You more or less pay the cost of an OA response to skip the backlog, which can be 2-3 years in some art units. The reason the first OA is guaranteed in that time is because Track 1 buys you a final disposition (allowance or FINAL OA) within a year of filling.

If anything, the "special" treatment given under Track 1 is a good thing for patentees. And it isn't like the old expedited examination option where you had to submit the dreaded document to the USPTO explaining differences with the prior art in your IDS.
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12 minutes ago, APMP said:

You are basically guaranteed a first action in 3-5 months under Track 1. You more or less pay the cost of an OA response to skip the backlog, which can be 2-3 years in some art units. The reason the first OA is guaranteed in that time is because Track 1 buys you a final disposition (allowance or FINAL OA) within a year of filling.

If anything, the "special" treatment given under Track 1 is a good thing for patentees. And it isn't like the old expedited examination option where you had to submit the dreaded document to the USPTO explaining differences with the prior art in your IDS.

In theory, you're more likely to get a better (more reliable) examiner when filing a Track 1.  Examiners who screw around and have shown they can't meet the deadlines are more likely to not get Track 1s assigned to them.

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In theory, you're more likely to get a better (more reliable) examiner when filing a Track 1.  Examiners who screw around and have shown they can't meet the deadlines are more likely to not get Track 1s assigned to them.
Didn't know that, but my experience over the past 7 years bears this out.
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Yeah I never did that bullshit with the examination support document.  Fuck all that. 

Never used PPH, either.  I don't want fucking euro or japlish claims in my US applications most of the time.  And from what I have seen, they tend to be very literal about the claims indicated allowable in the foreign application.

Plus, I don't know how many times I have filed a positive European Search or Examination Report only to have the examiner ignore the positive aspects of it.

In the old days, with the various expediting options you might get a first action pretty quick, but everything went to hell after that.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Your accelerated examination procedures confuse and frighten me.

But, seriously, where's the value in having a patent granted in a year?  If you know you're going to sue on it, it makes some sense, otherwise none.  Shit, in about half my cases we file a continuation to capture subject matter due to evolution of the invention, and in some cases that renders the original filing almost a nullity.

If you can use it to avoid bogging down on 101 bullshit, I can see it, for sure.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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24 minutes ago, Amos Moses said:

Yours is a very outside counsel centric view.  Efficiency in patent prosecution saves money and makes the GC happy when looking at the bills or evaluating the budget for IP spend.

Well, yeah if you are trying for sheer numbers and/or to be rock-bottom cheap, sure.  But $4000 buys a couple office action responses in corporate world, not sure what the going rate is these days for volume corporate clients.

My world tends to be get enforceable patents, with a few shitscrapers thrown in.  I pride myself on efficiency and cost-effectiveness but I have always eschewed high-volume low-fixed-fee work.  Nor will I do volume foreign-priority work.  I consider an RCE a failure, although it is necessary from time to time.

I don't see the value in having a patent granted in a year vs. two years, period.  Tripling/quadrupling the filing fee for that privilege makes it make even less sense.  If your patents hit art units that routinely take 4-5 years to grant, then it starts to make some sense, just to avoid that and maybe get a decent examiner.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Well it is only $2k for a small entity and $1k for a micro entity.

I have used Track 1 to:

1. Get continuations issued quickly and proliferate a patent portfolio that is already in litigation, licensing discussions, or being subjected to PTAB review.

2. Build a patent portfolio quickly for an earlyish stage company.

3. Accomplish specific business strategy goals where deadlines were being imposed by prior agreements (think cross-licensing and other scenarios that could "expire").

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8 minutes ago, APMP said:

Well it is only $2k for a small entity and $1k for a micro entity.

I have used Track 1 to:

1. Get continuations issued quickly and proliferate a patent portfolio that is already in litigation, licensing discussions, or being subjected to PTAB review.

2. Build a patent portfolio quickly for an earlyish stage company.

3. Accomplish specific business strategy goals where deadlines were being imposed by prior agreements (think cross-licensing and other scenarios that could "expire").

Those make sense.

I haven't even looked at a file wrapper on a prioritized examination application.  It's been a while since I've seen one from one of the other accelerated programs.  Like my mentor said, my perception of those was an accelerated final rejection or some form of letting the Examiner (or EPO or JPO) write your claims for you.  

Edited by TwiceHorn
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I should add, if it isn't abundantly clear, I am not categorically opposed to prioritized examination.  In the right circumstances with a willing client, I would use it.  I just haven't had that confluence of events and it's too expensive to use routinely.  I am somewhat predisposed against it, but more the various iterations preceding AIA prioritized examination, which seems innocuous enough.

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On 8/15/2020 at 7:57 AM, TwiceHorn said:

It's a small world, pretty damned small back then.  She was a year ahead of me in law school, didn't know her in undergrad.

OK, that's weird.  I think she was in a recitation/tutor session I taught in grad school.  I was ME but with an emphasis on acoustics and took some classes in EE, in this case with Elmer Hixson.

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36 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

OK, that's weird.  I think she was in a recitation/tutor session I taught in grad school.  I was ME but with an emphasis on acoustics and took some classes in EE, in this case with Elmer Hixson.

Did you ever encounter Captain/Rear Admiral Pestorius at Balcones/ARL?  His kids were friends of mine in undergrad.  He was an underwater acoustics guy, submariner.  Nice guy.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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No, that name doesn't ring a bell.  I did very little work at ARL.  My research ended up in high-power rotating machines and linear accelerators at Center for Electromechanics.  I did get loaned out to ARL to do a little work on the design of a novel underwater transducer, but it never went anywhere as far as I know.

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54 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

No, that name doesn't ring a bell.  I did very little work at ARL.  My research ended up in high-power rotating machines and linear accelerators at Center for Electromechanics.  I did get loaned out to ARL to do a little work on the design of a novel underwater transducer, but it never went anywhere as far as I know.

Rail guns!!!

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