Like a lot of your colleagues, you have an academic background in engineering. However, unlike many of your colleagues, you truly enjoyed being an engineer and spent quite a few years as an inventor. What made you choose the legal side of inventorship? I always enjoyed science, and my “heroes”...Read more
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By: Bonnie Smith, Partner Intellectual Property rights are invaluable assets that deter competitors, create successful brands, and develop company cultures. Companies that generate a lot of IP typically have internal procedures in place for “invention harvesting,” to ensure they're obtaining the...Read more
Tell us a little about your background. I began my educational career at Ohio State University in the engineering program, which is notoriously tough. And although I’d always been very good at anything STEM-related, the rigors of the program just weren’t a good fit for me, so I decided to explore...Read more
By Bonnie Smith Intellectual property is a valuable property asset that requires time and money to protect, and it’s important to notify potential competitors, infringers and the general public of your claim as soon as possible. Proper product markings provide notice to infringers and ensure that...Read more
How did you wind up in the IP industry? Much like the vast majority of my peers, I began my academic pursuits in engineering. During my first years in school, I wasn’t exactly the most studious of students. I still made decent grades, but I wouldn’t say I did my best. It wasn’t until towards the...Read more
By: Jonathan A. Platt, Partner Baseball Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn famously said, “Hitting was timing, and pitching was upsetting timing.” Indeed, timing is important in so many endeavors; Friday is typically considered the riskiest day to schedule surgery, and the end of the month is usually the...Read more
By: Bonnie Smith If you have an invention that has potential commercial value to you or your company, you definitely want to consider protecting your invention by obtaining a patent. Although there is nothing to prevent you from preparing and filing your application with the USPTO without legal...Read more
By Luis Carrion , Managing Partner As with other businesses, the pandemic has significantly changed the way we operate, the way our people interact with each other, with our clients and with our neighborhood here in Cleveland. Although our physical office is open, many of our people continue to...Read more
What brought you to the IP Law industry? My father is a patent attorney, and he’s taught me everything I know about the industry. As a kid, I liked to think of new ideas and show them off to him, though he hasn’t patented any of my ideas yet. When he became a sole practitioner, he asked that I come...Read more
Patents and trade secrets provide two different approaches that can be utilized to protect your invention. While patents require public disclosure of features of the invention to obtain, trade secrets have the exact opposite requirement- secrecy. Patents are typically considered to provide a...Read more
