Patent Agent for a Day

My father passed away about a year ago, leaving us many patents for the high voltage devices that he had invented and licensed. I spent Sunday going through them, working out which were under license and which were not and checking the payment schedules for them.

My father hated the way law firms would charge nearly a thousand dollars to pay a maintenance fee to a patent office, and he had a point. It’s a hefty bill for five minutes of paralegal time. He paid them himself when he was alive, but didn’t leave any schedules behind, so I had to make one. Some payments were already due so I took care of that too.

After that there was an office action requiring some minor changes (antecedent basis and incorporation by reference — that sort of thing) so I fixed those and, on Monday called the examiner to make sure it was to his liking.

There was one case where a patent had lapsed in Australia (that country doesn’t send out reminders) and I did leave that one to a local attorney to sort out, but all-in-all it was pretty simple stuff, and I was kind of fun to play patent agent for a day, even if I was only representing myself.

Martin Cross
Japanese Patent Translation