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My name is Larry Nixon, I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering
in 1965, and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1966. I'm a patent attorney
in Arlington, Virginia. I constantly talk to some of the latest inventors -- I'm
constantly learning -- that's half of my job. The other half of my job is to defend
my clients against patients that were improvidently granted and for that I have to look back to
the history of engineering so I get both ends -- I get the history and I get the latest,
newest, greatest stuff. I use my engineering education every day of my life and my job.
As a patient attorney, I have to be able to understand the inventions that are made by
my clients or in the case of defending against patients that I think should not have been
granted I have to learn how to understand those and interface with expert witnesses.
Well, according to the constitution the patient system is supposed to promote the useful arts
so I do that by helping my clients get patients -- they deserve patients and I do that by
helping invalidate other peoples' patients that my clients are accused of infringing.
But here at the University of Illinois you learn the very basics, from the very beginning,
the elementals of physics, and chemistry and of math, and you apply that in the university
in the laboratories here -- we have students that are actually building integrated circuits
-- even undergraduates. This is hands on experience which I started when I was a teenager
as a ham radio operator building my own equipment and I think that they do a very good job here
of equipping people to make contributions to the real world -- make the new devices
that are going to make our life even more interesting as time goes on.