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Olympic Patent Works, PLLC |
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We have decided to list issued patents and published patent applications to facilitate evaluation of our practice by potential clients and colleagues. We do not list our clients on our web site, for a variety of reasons, including protecting confidentialities and because we prefer that our reputation be based on our work product and practice, rather than a reflection of the great and well-deserved reputations of our many wonderful clients. Issued patents and published patent applications are, by contrast, publicly available information, and the fact that we filed and/or prosecuted a particular issued patent or published patent application can be easily obtained from documents available from the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO").
Two patent applications that best reflect the range of our patent drafting tasks are U.S. Patent No. 7,072,723 B2, probably the most challenging issued patent on which we have yet worked, and U.S. Patent No. 6,901,370 B2, a deceptively simple issued patent. Below, we provide links to pages containing most of the issued patents and published patent applications for which we are responsible.
Please note that we have listed each patent in only one category, although many could have been listed in multiple categories. Much of our work is interdisciplinary, and therefore difficult to categorize. For example, some of the published patent applications listed under the topic "microarrays" could have been fairly listed under computer software.
We are careful to distinguish a number of different categories of work product, to be completely clear with regard to our contribution to a particular issued patent or published application.
The first, and most extensive, category is Patents Prepared and Prosecuted by Olympic Patent Works. These are patents that issued, based on patent applications that we prepared, and based on subsequent responses and interactions with the USPTO that are collectively referred to as "prosecution." The issued patents listed in the first category were both written and prosecuted by one of us.
The second category is Published Applications Prepared by Olympic Patent Works. Pending applications are patent applications that have been filed with the USPTO but have not yet issued. Many pending applications are published approximately 18 months after they are filed.
The third category is Patents Prepared by Olympic Patent Works and Prosecuted by Another Firm. Issued patents in this category are generally patents prepared by one of us when we worked at another firm, and prosecuted by that firm, or another firm, following our departure. Occasionally, clients are acquired, and patent prosecution is transferred to the acquiring entity's patent counsel. An issued patent may list an attorney, agent, or firm beneath the name of the primary examiner. In general, for issued patents in this category, the entity that prosecuted the patent often chooses to list itself on the Issued Patent. We do not choose to do this. In our opinion, the preparation and filing of the patent application is generally the most demanding and time-consuming portion of the process, and generally requires the greatest creativity and technical and scientific expertise. We would not wish to appear to take credit for another attorney's, agent's, or firm's work. The identity of the attorney or agent who, or firm that, prepared and filed the patent application corresponding to an issued patent is available in the public record. We list issued patents in this category with some trepidation, because claims may be amended or replaced during prosecution, and therefore, the claims appearing in the issued patents in this category may not reflect our approach.
The fourth category is Patents Prosecuted by Olympic Patent Works and Prepared by Another Firm. We include these patents with great trepidation, because they usually neither reflect our style and approach to patent drafting, nor our approach to claim drafting. However, we are nonetheless proud to have been entrusted with each of these prosecution tasks, and happy to have carried the task out successfully on behalf of our clients.
Although we try to update these lists relatively frequently, we cannot guarantee that they are complete. We are currently prosecuting between 200 and 300 patent applications that have not been published. Much of our latest and most cutting-edge work falls into this category. Sometimes, 5 or more patents that we have prepared and prosecuted issue in a single week, and we have many applications currently in prosecution. Also, there are many applications that we prepared while working in other firms that we have lost track of, but that have probably issued by now. One should bear in mind that, although we generally try to write broad, but reasonable claims, and quite often manage to get such claims allowed, there are circumstances in which broad claims cannot be obtained, or circumstances in which clients may choose narrower claims in order to expedite the process of obtaining an issued patent. Also, there are circumstances in which broader claims end up being prosecuted in continuation applications that may not yet have issued. Finally, many of our clients prefer that no attorney, agent, or firm be listed on their issued patents, which explains why so many of the issued patents in the above lists are not attributed to us. Again, however, this information is readily available in the public record. The issued patents and published patent applications can be viewed on the USPTO's web site, using patent search facilities provided there.
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Website Copyright 2005 Olympic Patent
Works, PLLC
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