Technical Writing in the "Real World": Patents

Last week, Washington came to Happy Valley in the form of a visitor from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  Bob Oberleitner, Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations for the Mechanical Disciplines and a 1982 Penn State Industrial Engineering grad, talked with our technical writers on Monday, October 19, 2009, about topics ranging from level of detail in technical description, to blogs, to patents that get covered in the news for their outrageousness.

USPTO in the News

The USPTO has issued over 7 million patents over its history and currently averages issuing anywhere from 150,000 to 170,000 new patents each year. Bob oversees several mechanical groups at the USPTO. In the mechanical technologies applicants file and examiners examine various products from fishing lures to photocopiers, trains to planes. These patents rarely hit the newspapers.  Bob pointed out that even though the USPTO issues thousands of valuable and valid patents each year to no fanfare, there are a few that may look or sound odd in the news and for which the Office is criticized.  Take for instance: 

• Dog Waste Catcher and Holder
• Animal Toy that Looks Like a Stick
• Method of Swinging on a Swing
• Amusement Apparatus for Kicking the User's Butt

While Michael Jackson didn't come up during class, after class Bob mentioned that Michael Jackson several trademarks and one patent, and so his original signature on applications is on file with the USPTO. (For instance, Jackson is the co-inventor of a "system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface.") After Jackson's death, USPTO employees were worried that fans would request Jackson's file to collect his autograph, and so for  this and other reasons they pulled the file and put it on display with other Jackson memorabilia at the USPTO National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum.

USPTO in the Blogosphere and Online

The websites pointing to the "dog waste catcher" and the "method of swinging" aren't the only websites and blogs that that keep an eye on and criticize the USPTO. IP Watchdog, PatentDocs, and Patently O (which bills itself as "The nation's leading patent law blog")  all write regularly and in detail about the policies and decisions of the Patent Office.

In August of this year, former IBM executive David Kappos was sworn in as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, and since then has begun his own weekly blog for employees of the USPTO, published on the agency's intranet, where he encourages employees to respond to his posts and issues facing the office.

Tug-of War Over Detail in Descriptions

A central part of the patent application process is the description of the patentable product or process, complete with drawings. The USPTO employs 6200 patent examiners to scrutinize and respond to patent applications (the Office has hired 1200+ examiners in each of the years 2006, 2007 and 2008, and less than 600 in 2009; see USA Jobs to find such jobs). The examiners have to write questions and issues, correspond with patent attorneys, write up personal interviews, and discuss procedural problems and summarize the case in a report. In short, writing is required and important.

Patent attorneys want to present the broadest description of a client's product for patent (so that it can cover more ground and exclude more competitors). Patent examiners are in a position where they need to push attorneys for more precision and detail in the description so that the patent claims do not encompass other know devices or inventions.

So You Want to Patent Your Invention?

A patent gives an inventor a short-term monopoly on a device, design, or process (patents extend 20 years from filing). The USPTO begins educating its customers by offering a clear definition and description of "patent" on its website. In the USPTO's "Guide to Filing a Design Patent Application,"  the definition of "design patent" and the description of what such a patent application should look like needs to be precise and detailed; it sounds legalistic because attorneys are involved and will make decisions about what is patentable and where patent infringement exists. To a certain extent, the precision of the language affects how successful the monopoly will be and how much money a creator will make.

Do you want to write your Technical Definition and Description assignment for a new product or process? Use models from the USPTO and their guidelines to help tailor your project.