What are Patent Examiners and How They are Important in Your Patent Case

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!