What Is the Patent Trial and Appeal Board?
The patent trial and appeal board otherwise known as the PTAB is part of the United States Trademark Office. The patent trial and appeal board oversees proceedings such as the inter partes review, they also oversee post-grant review, covered business method review and of course derivation proceedings.
The patent trial and appeal board is the legal avenue for the resolution of validity challenges to a patent; therefore this is a very important part of the legal process when filing for a patent. A patent lawyer should have enough knowledge to help you if your patent is disputed against and goes to trial.
So before you can go before the patent trial and appeal board you must have a licensed patent. Licensing a patent is simply a statement that you are granting other individuals and organizations to make, use, sell or otherwise alter your invention. In return for licensing your patent you typically receive royalty payments.
Patent licenses are territorial rights which means the exclusive rights are applicable in the country the patent was filed and granted in. This means that to have a fully secure patent across the globe you would need to file for a patent in every country of the world. Any patent lawyer is going to be able to help the United States patent, and potentially help you get patents and other countries or direct you to people who work with patents and other countries. Patent protection is granted for a very limited period, the spirit is typically 20 years from the file date. Therefore you will have to file for a patent after this is up.
What does a patent lawyer do?
Patent lawyers, specialize in obtaining protection. This is not the typical type of protection that you think of when you think of protection — they obtain protection for intellectual property. They will examine the invention, they will guide the inventors through the patent application and then they will obtain the patent for the invention.
Anyone wishing to be a patent lawyer must first enter into an apprenticeship because a law school loan will not provide enough understanding of formulating a patent application. Again, law school alone does not provide enough understanding to write a patent application. Lawyers in this field must have an apprenticeship that they went through to learn about patents, because they need to know how to represent their clients which are inventors; and must be able to protect their clients rights to their invention especially during patent disputes.
The following are required for patent training, potential patent lawyers typically have to have a four year degree in the field of science such as chemistry, biology or physics may be even engineering. If they choose to have a degree in engineering they must focus in electrical, typical, mechanical or biomedical engineering. They must complete a law program from an accredited school and pass the state bar, and then they must pass a license exam.