WELCOME
Welcome to the September 2010 SVPG newsletter. This month we will be discussing the nationwide
scope of our small law firm and the ways in which our practice is "friendly" to
our clients.
We have reviewed in previous newsletters the unusual interaction
between our firm and our clients: -
from the warm phone greetings when you call -
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to the informal though prompt communications
with our staff -
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to our firm's fixed quotes for our services -
- to the absence of hourly billing and
"nickel-diming" -
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to the absence of telephone "hells" and to immediate
2-way communicating -
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to the friendliness of our firm's responses to
needs for last-minute conferences -
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and to our team-oriented services where more
than one professional can answer your questions -
Our firm seeks to help clients whether near our main offices or
not. The local friendliness when we
personally meet with clients is extended to do services seamlessly for our
clients throughout the nation. As
interaction software systems get better and use broader bands, our meetings and
conferences with our clients almost begin to duplicate the friendly local feel.
Our geographically furthest clients compliment our reachability and
presence despite time zone differences.
In time, we plan to have multiple satellite offices to even better
expand services to our clients. Lastly,
every staff member at our firm must be devoted to helping clients better each
day with the knowledge and skills needed in our profession. |
"We don't need the hardhat to do the job quote."
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Intellectual Property News
PATENTS AND JOB CREATION
Judge Paul R. Michel (former chief judge of United States
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) recently co-wrote an article for the
New York Times entitled "Inventing Our Way Out of Joblessness."
The article outlines the benefits that issuing patents could have on the
economy and in job creation.
Of note were the following suggestions for Congressional
action:-
Congress should give the patent office a
budget of $1 billion to update the USPTO computer systems and hire and train
Patent Examiners to clear the backlog of patents; and
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Congress should establish a tax credit of
up to $19,000 for every patent that a business receives ("[E]nabling
[businesses] to recoup half of the average $38,000 in patent office and
lawyers' fees spent to obtain a patent.").
The authors project that implementing the above suggestions
would create about 2.5 million new jobs over three years.
You can read the entire article here.
THE U.S. PATENT OFFICE HAS A FACEBOOK PAGE
The
USPTO has a facebook page. As of the date of this writing, its page has
2,003 "likes." Become a "fan" of the USPTO on
facebook here.
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Great Inventions in History
1. Electric Stringed Instrument - Lloyd Loar - Pub. December 31, 1935
The first magnetic pick-up was invented in 1924 by Lloyd
Loar, a Gibson employee. The real first all electric guitars were made in 1931
by the Electric String Company. Designed by, amongst others, the legendary
Adolf Rickenbacker, these 'fry pan' guitars were made of aluminum and played
across the knees with a slide.The first electric or electrified acoustic guitar was the Gibson EL150 in 1936.
Click Image for PDF and larger image
2. Gas Powered Lawn Mower - Leonard Goodall - Pub. July 23, 1940
 Click Image for PDF and larger image
3. Light Bulb - Thomas Edison - Pub. Jan 27, 1880
US223898
A
ELECTRIC LAMP
EDISON THOMAS ALVA
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Alphabet Soup
M- Maintenance Fees: fees paid at the 4th,
8th, and 12th year anniversary of issuance in order to
keep a United States
patent enforceable. The penalty for non-payment of the maintenance fees
is termination of the patent rights.
N-Notice of Allowance
or
NOA:
a notice from the USPTO that the applicant is entitled to a patent under the
law, stating a request for payment of a specified issue fee (and/or a possible
publication fee), and is typically due within three months of the NOA's mailing
date.
O- Oath: a signed document in
which an applicant: declares that they are the original inventor(s), states
their country's citizenship, confirms that they have reviewed the contents of
the specification and claims of the patent application, and acknowledges their
obligation to disclose any information regarding patentability. An oath
(also called a declaration) is required from the USPTO for each nonprovisional
patent application.
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Marty's hows and whys
Issue I:Negative Campaigning
By: Marty Stoneman
Patent practice requires unusual skills in two completely
different language worlds. The two
worlds are mathematical and natural language. In patent practice, we must be
experts in understanding hard sciences and technology modeled in concrete
mathematical ways. We must also be
experts in using natural languages, especially to better persuade and argue and
not to be vulnerable to unfair persuasion of a party which may be opposed to
the interest of our client.
Our human brains understand each of these two language-types
in a different way. Our brains
understands mathematical languages,
in a sense, as the kind of space geometry description that is very old
evolution-wise in animal sensory equipment and is automatic to us and not under
conscious control. Our brains understand natural
languages as creating "substitute" experiences imaginatively in the virtual
worlds in our heads (to interact with and blend with "real" experience).
In a sense, mathematical symbols are concrete and math
symbols have a neutral meaning or
semantic content (that is, it does not matter if the semantic content is
approved or disapproved -- for example, the number three has the same semantic
content or meaning whether a listener approves the number three or does not
approve the number three).
Natural language symbols are reminders of a listener's experience associated with a symbol so
such symbols might be relatively specific and, within humans having similar
experience in a language group, may have a somewhat neutral semantic content (in terms of reminding each human of a
somewhat similar imaginary experience). Examples
of relatively neutral such words are:
child, picture, food, etc.
But natural language permits "stuffing" of approvals or disapprovals
into and mixed up with the semantic content of natural language symbols,
creating such natural language expressions mixed with disapprovals as: brat, ugly picture, bad food, etc. Or, if approvals are stuffed in we have: angel, beautiful picture, great food,
etc. Since such non-neutral expressions act as reminders to a listener of previous
experience of that listener, and since, in a multi-cultural society each sub-culture
has approvals and disapprovals different
from each other subculture, each use of a non-neutral
expression creates unique experiences in the heads of each listener.
The way the use of non-neutral expressions, or name-calling,
or negative campaigning, works is that the speaker can control whether the
listener is being reminded of an experience which is painful to that listener by
"stuffing/mixing" disapproval into the expression or being reminded of an
experience which is pleasureful by "stuffing/mixing" approval into the
expression. In this way, non-neutral
expressions, without controlling the specific reminder brought to the
imagination of a particular listener, always control, at least for a few
seconds, whether the listener is experiencing pain or pleasure. It is then relatively simple to associate your
candidate with pleasure and/or the opposing candidate with pain. Then the conditioning effects which occur
(well-known) are non-conscious and
not stoppable without special training.
Since, for example, a spoken symbol causes an air pressure
pattern against an eardrum which pattern creates a virtual experience for the
listener in just a few milliseconds,
the special training is not amenable to reasoning or critical thinking --
experts are fooled and conditioned in this way just as easily as children. One
needs to undergo training that will permit recognition of the non-neutral
expression -- when one wishes to recognize such -- within milliseconds and such
training must interfere with the automaticity of the virtual experience.
In this sense, negative campaigning is always a miscommunication of message and always unfairly fools the
listeners in a non-conscious way.
But it works, unfair or not, and probably will be used, with
"I approve this message", by politicians and others until educators (in
democracies like the U.S.A.) universally train voters how not to be non-consciously controlled.
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Stoneman Volk Patent Group
Offices:
3770 N. Seventh St. Suite 100
Phoenix, AZ 85014
501 W. Broadway St. Suite 800
San Diego, CA 92101
Tel: (888) 252-2200
Fax: (877) 786-6362
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