Through this article, I would like to share with you my vision of my last 7 years as a patent engineer and more precisely as a Patent Attorney. First, do you know what is a Patent Attorney?
I have always defined this position as follows:
A Patent Attorney is a clever mix between an entrepreneur, a scientist and a lawyer.
It is the union of these three areas of expertise that generally seem so far from each other, and which only the Patent Attorney can unify!
Because, you see, to become a Patent Attorney, a true MacGyver of modern times, you must have a wide and sharp scientific background, and you must have followed a legal training, and having in mind economic and strategic business issues... It may sound like a lot for only one brain, but it's the daily routine of the so-called "Conseil en Propriété Industrielle (CPI)", French translation given to these multidisciplinary experts!
Thus, armed with these multiple skills, the Patent Attorney assists his clients in the development and implementation of a tailor-made IP strategy. This means understanding the client's needs, understanding his economic landscape, his technical and legal problems, designing a strategy to meet his expectations, and above all moving on to translate this strategy into real and valuable actions!
Among the various tools available to the Patent Attorney, we obviously have intellectual property titles and their armada of contracts to secure the battlefield. Because an intellectual property title is not so powerful if it is not embedded into a defined contractual environment.
Take my example, as a Patent Attorney, technology is my ally, and so I use patents as a weapon of massive construction, protecting technical solutions to technical problems. This protection obviously requires the definition of the client’s Business needs, the identification of inventions, the drafting of patent applications, the defense of these patent applications in front of the so-called patent offices, and finally, if necessary, the attack of competitors who would not respect the intellectual property (IP) game!
This means that I must understand the technology of each of my clients, but also their economic environment and their development strategy. While some Patent Attorney specializes in relatively restricted technical areas, I have the chance to navigate on a sea of limitless technologies. In this kind of situation, the Patent Attorney develops scientific skills in domains ranging, for example in my case, from renewable energies to artificial intelligence through health, microelectronics, optics, mechanics, cryptography, robotics, or even the culinary field to name but a few of the areas in which I have been able to evolve... Each time I wrote a patent application, I fed my mind with new technical knowledge, sometimes doing research to master new technologies. To correctly describe an invention, one must understand it, understand how it works, understand the technical problems it solves and finally understand the benefits it offers, but also understand its business impact. Each drafting of a patent application is equivalent to becoming an expert in a different technical field. A Patent Attorney must be a perfect scientific chameleon. And this is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful intellectual adventures that one can live.
7 years feeding my mind with new knowledge, 7 years guiding inventors on the road to the protection and valorization of their “brain juice” as I like to call their innovations, 7 years adding my stone to the economic world!
There is nothing more rewarding for a Patent Attorney than to see his client, having worked hard, having gone through difficult times, finally achieving the desired success! Whether it is through successful fundraising, the marketing of patented products or the transfer of patents to run happy days under the sun, accompanying these women and men on the road to success for 7 years is a powerful feeling. Make no mistake, the Patent Attorney also guide his clients in delicate phases of negotiation or audit, he is the main interlocutor when intellectual property is discussed. A good Patent Attorney is a key asset for any company that aims to sustain its business, to protect its innovations and to enhance the fruit of its intellect.
And what about the famous phases of “Patent Harvesting”, a real potential for technical and business innovations? When you work together with Business and R&D teams to identify technical solutions to circumvent patented technologies by competitors, and on top of that you end up with a patentable solution that solves a Business situation, it is an intense satisfaction you feel when you congratulate the teams for this amazing work!
In short, this job is a real challenge, this job requires incredibly special skills, this job is a real vocation!
You do not become a Patent Attorney by accident, you are born “Patent Attorney”, the titles, the diplomas, the exams, all this is just a formality for the one who has always been animated by the following three questions: Why? How? What if?
