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A patent examiner is a very important person in your life
when you are an inventor and the applicant on a U.S. patent. Or
for that matter, an international patent application
or a foreign patent application. I'm Rich Beem. I'm a patent
attorney in Chicago. And I work with patent examiners. I prepare
and file patent applications for inventors and for their
companies. And I prosecute those applications through the U.S.
Patent and Trademark office and other patent offices around the
world to obtain issuance of patents. There are 6,000 plus
examiners in the U.S. Patent and Trademark office alone. These
are very highly educated, highly skilled people. They are not
lawyers, they are technical people. They have engineering
degrees and science degrees, and they specialize in particular
technologies. When we file a patent application on your
behalf, the most likely thing to happen after about a year when
the examiner gets to your application - which has been
waiting in line with all the other patent applications that
are filed, and they take those up in order that they're filed.
That's one reason why you want to get an early filing date. The
easiest thing for the examiner to do is to reject your patent
application to find in the prior art. And they do their own
search that someone else has done something similar to yours.
And they might take the position that there's nothing new about
your patent application or it would have been obvious to
anyone skilled in your particular technology. We
interpret that - as your patent attorneys - as explain further
to us why we should give this inventor a patent. Tell us more
about why it's new, why it's non-obvious, why it's useful.
And this is what makes it harder - do that within the bounds of
what is actually disclosed the original patent application. We
cannot add anything new. That's why we try to get all the
details in from the very beginning. That's why we ask you
a lot of questions. That's why we ask you to bring all the
details - all the drawings, all the photographs, the data - into
us at the time we prepare the patent application. So we work
with the examiners. We prepare written responses to their
office actions. We amend the claims in many cases. We present
arguments. We also interview the examiners. We do that by
telephone or in person, and sometimes we include the
inventor and even have the inventor demonstrate the
invention. So we want to make sure the examiner understands it
well. Because the examiner understands the invention is
going to be more comfortable allowing the patent claims and
granting you the patent that you deserve. You have an invention,
that's why you're watching this video. If you'd like help in
patenting your invention, that's what I do as a patent attorney.
Call me; my phone number is 312-201-0011. Thank you!