I was one of those students, hoping to work in a groundbreaking field, with absolutely no plan for protecting my work. As we learned in class, this can be disastrous. Patenting is a very opaque convoluted field requiring armies of lawyers to battle over litigations and claims. Even in the most prestigious tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Intel, the patent knowledge is reserved from all but a select few. Looking back at myself, I find it hard to imagine I could've plan to file for a patent given my past knowledge. Looking forward, I still find it hard to imagine I could file a patent given the vast amount of complications and requirements. But knowledge is always better than ignorance.
All and all, I think my greatest takeaway from this class was not the knowledge of how to actually file a patent. But to at least be made aware of the vast amount of knowledge it takes to file a patent, obviously many more years of schooling and experience. My experience with this class has been equivalent to that of Chem 1A or Bio 1A, not enough detail to prepare me to be a chemist, but enough to pique my interest in the field; to help me decide if I want to pursue it further.
Hi Chris! Great work!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! The biggest thing I also took out of this class was also not how to file a patent (because I'm not an engineer, I doubt I will never do so in the future), but just knowledge that makes me more aware of patents in general. Great work!
Great post Chris. I like how you are going to take the knowledge that you learned from this class and apply it to protecting your own intellectual property. It has been a great semester and I think you have gained a lot from taking this course.
ReplyDeleteHi Chris! Before taking IEOR, I, like you, was definitely one of those students who are interested in working in a Startup but had "no more hashed out than the word patents". I am really interested in developing my own product, but I honestly had no idea protecting my work is such an important aspect of it. In fact, I didn't even know how much work went into filing a patent. I am truly grateful for this class!
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that your biggest takeaway from this class is being aware of how much knowledge it takes to file a patent. Of course I am not trying to undermine the importance of that, but were there other things that really stood out to you?