Invention Analysis and Claiming Seminar

Based on Ronald Slusky's widely praised book, the Invention Analysis and Claiming Seminar teaches a comprehensive approach to analyzing inventions and capturing them in a sophisticated set of patent claims.  Through this interactive seminar, participants will enhance their skills in a classroom setting.

Program Overview

“Drafting a claim without first knowing what the invention is is like drawing a map without first having surveyed the terrain.”

The practitioner’s first task is to identify the invention—the broad inventive concept underlying the embodiments—and only then to undertake to draft the claims. So although we will be drafting claims, this isn’t a claim-drafting course per se. The focus is on claiming strategies based on our analysis of the invention and its fallback features. Various sessions will thus look at…

• Why simply whittling down a claim may not capture the broad invention.
• The problem-solution statement as the key to discovering the breadth of the invention.
• How to draft independent claims based on the problem-solution statement and the inventive departure.
• Using the paradigm of the Planned Retreat to draft meaningful dependent claims.

"Think Big"

In this session we will look at some everyday objects, such as bubble pack, and will apply the prescription “Think Big” along with the problem-solution paradigm to discover the breadth of the invention.

“The reason to get a patent is not because the patent owner will market the invention, but because someone else will—or would, but for the existence of the patent.”

Drafting allowable claims is only part of the job. Practitioners need to anticipate what will happen when the patent owner goes to enforce the patent. Another one of our sessions addresses a key aspect of that goal—the importance of drafting claims that define the invention in all of its commercially important “settings.”

“First be a skeptic; then be an advocate”

This session looks at a number of arguably obvious invention ideas, such as the upside-down ketchup bottle label. Participants will be challenged to think about how nonobviousness might be argued.

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2010 Upcoming Events

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February 8-9, 2010

AMA Executive Conference Center

New York, NY

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Recent Events:

June 1-2, 2009

Channel Point Conference Center

Boston, MA

May 19-20, 2009 

Summit Center

Chicago, IL