Some helpful info about patents, and becoming a patent attorney or a non-law school educated patent lawyer practicing before the PTO.
SURPRISE - a law degree is NOT required to be licensed to do patent law. (we have exposed a big-bucks attorney-secret here!!). It is open to all engineers and most other scientists.

Licensing information and study material are further down on this page.

The PTO website is www.uspto.gov
The licensing office (OED) at the PTO is at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/oed/

This is the link to the patent bar files.

Jump over family pages to continue with patent and business pages.

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FAMILY AND NON PATENT PAGES

Some interesting original dog stories for your children.
The Adventures of the Dark Nose Dog and Werner von Wiener -- Private Investigators.

  Made in America.... Made in the United States. A list of toys made in the United States

 Fraudulently labeled children's telescopes and other un-functional optical toys.
How to judge optical toys and lenses.   Simple tests you can do right in the store.

 Take a look at --> The GREEN PAJAMAS BAND page. . . . Unfortunately, this page is not a complete catalog of their many CD's, Tapes, and Vinyls. Email inquiries, kudos, bricks to joeross@seanet.com The Green Pajamas is a light duty, somewhat metallic (I call it sheet metal, as contrasted to heavy metal) band from Seattle.

 The Green Pajamas is quite list enable (mostly) even by old-fashioned music types who insist on a melody and sensible lyrics.
Yes, their records are in the stores, they do play on stage, and have been gathering acclaim, more like adulation, in the pop music world.

 ENDURING SOUL FOOD:
Continuing in the historical Faith and Traditions of Scripture as handed down by the Church Fathers through the ages. No Politically Correct nonsense

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PATENT OR INVENTIONS FOR SALE OR LICENSE:
These are courtesy listings and will be forwarded to the inventors.
I can offer comment on the product or patent itself, but all business negotiation will be directly with the inventors.
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An Apparatus (bed system) for sleeping or resting without putting stress on the skeleton or pressure points on the skin.    Ideal for chronic back problems, decubis ulcers (bed sores), preggies, burn victims, thoracic or other surgery, or any other malady aggravated by laying in a conventional bed. PN 6,027,464.
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 A handle containing polishing compound and a dispenser. The handle fits onto common brands of hand-held polishers, thereby permitting dispensing the polishing compound onto the surface to be polished without stopping the polisher or the action. A GREAT time and back saver.
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 PATENT PAGE -- Continued

After a career of product design and manufacturing, being taken to the cleaners by Patent Attorneys, and knowing that the public deserved better, I decided to look into the requisites to be Patent Attorney.

  SURPRISE --- The ONLY prerequisite for becoming a patent lawyer licensed to practice before the PTO is a degree in Engineering or similar science. !!!!! . NOT law School.
Although a patent attorney is supposed to have technical competence, there is NO requirement to SHOW any technical competence, and few attorneys are competent in science or engineering.. . . These are well kept secrets by the Attorney Crowd.

Non-attorney patent lawyers (i.e. without Law Schooling and/or passing the State Bar) are called Patent Agents and are licensed to practice only before US Patent Office in patent cases.

 Some information on the Patent Bar Exam is indexed further down on this website. . The Official scoop can be obtained by writing the PTO, Office of Enrollment and Discipline, and/or the PTO website -- www.uspto.gov. or The Office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED) at www.uspto.gov/web/offices/olia/oed/

A large number of Patent Agents are law students or law graduates that have not passed their State Bar Exams, when they do, are "promoted" to Patent Attorney. However most other PATENT AGENTS are competent, experienced engineers or scientists with a new, truly professional, specialty. . In contrast, most attorneys, (all types) go to Law School right out of undergraduate studies and were/are/remain know-nothings who have never experienced earning a living in productive pursuits. What do they know of working for a living, running a business, inventing, or designing a new product?? ? ? !
 

The author of this page is not anti-attorney, but has personal and hearsay experience indicating that the Attorney Business has slipped into unsavory practices which cry out for exposure and/or explanation. Some are the natural result of the operation of the Attorney Code of Ethics and the usual training procedures to become an attorney, others are the result of widespread ignoring their Code of Ethics and of ignoring or ignorance of common social and business etiquette.
If the attorney biz really wanted to clean up it act, it would first require that every aspiring attorney have at least 4 years experience working for a living doing something productive before being admitted to law school and another 2 before being allowed to practice law. They also should declare that practicing law and holding public office is prima-facie conflict of interest.
 
 

                                                    
The following is a list of documents that a person with a new idea or 
starting a business may find useful:  

CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE,  (links to documents on sub-pages):
   I.    Patent Bar Exam material.   Analysis of old
tests, test taking and 
             study tips.

   II.   Inventing, Patenting, and Business.    Some
advice and information 
             about
inventing, preparing a patent application, and exploiting
             your
invention,  that is,  going into business or selling your
            
invention,  Cost/budget.

   III.  Link to Traditional Anglican Church information.   

   IV.   Utility programs for various purposes, including making sense
             of the
PTO classification files.   Source Code here.  Ask 
             if you
would rather have a load & run version.  

   V.    Patent for sale or license. Attachment for a hand-held
powered
            Automobile
polishing machine.

Registration to Practice Patent Law before the U.S. Patent Office.
. . I have the unpublished PTO Graders Guides for the last three years.
. . These are the actual answer keys the PTO Bar Exam Graders used to score the afternoon claim writing session.
. . The graders' guides have been scanned, converted to ASCII files and posted herein.

This is the link to the patent bar files.

"Secret" PTO Grading Guides for Afternoon Claim drafting Mechanical, Electrical, and Chemical Options, 1993 - 1996.

A reprint of the PTO (useless) policy on access to the bar exam by handicapped persons. Note: this policy does not address the common, non debilitating, handicaps many have in completing the exam, thus failing it. The bar exam is almost exclusively for the young attorney candidate. Old geezers, diabetics, and preggies can forget about passing.

Some proposals for changing the PTO Agent/Attorney registration process and an essay from the Franklin Pierce Law Institute on the history of registration of patent professionals. . . Proposed change in the law governing registration.

 All of the test question files (below) can be listed or printed by most word processors. Use the "programmer", ASCII, Non-Document, or "Flat" modes. Or whatever your word processor calls the unformatted mode.
Or use LIST.COM (below) to list, Or use PRINTDOC.BAS, or PRINTDOC.EXE which print a formatted copy.

Download these files and use them in your study for the patent bar.

Click Here To Get Any Of Files Cataloged Below.

---------SAMPLE STUDY GUIDES (currently shipping October 2003) -------

 I. Example -- Index of all Bar Exam questions 1991 - April 1999. Cross indexed between MPEP, 37CFR, 35USC paragraph and key words. . Can be taken into the Test Room.

 II. Study Guide. Each Bar Exam question subject listed by frequency of occurrence. MPEP, 37CFR, 35USC paragraph. All Questions 1991 - April 1999

III. TIPS FOR TAKING THE PATENT BAR EXAMINATION.

 IV. PTO Graders' Guides. - Mechanical, Electrical, and Chemical Options, August 1993 - 1996.

PRINTABLE VERSION OF THE GRAPH.

A reprint of the PTO (useless) policy on access to the bar exam by handicapped persons. Note: this policy does not address the common, non debilitating, handicaps many have in completing the exam, thus failing it. The bar exam is almost exclusively for the young attorney candidate. Old geezers, preggies, migrainers, slow readers, etc, can forget about passing.

Looks like it is about time to take the PTO to task about putting on prejudicial bar exams. The PTO is vulnerable not only to a charge of discrimination against the handicapped, but would likely lose if some of the rediculous charges that have been successful against industry about presumed racial discrimination were brought against the PTO/OED.

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 ----- FILE LISTING AND CHANGING TOOLS -----
Optional, to manipulate the Bar Question Study Guides and for general use.

LIST.COM File Lister for all files.
. . Use to list these study guides. LIST.COM is called within SORTBIG.

IX. PRINTDOC.EXE (Executable program) File Printer for all types of text files. Sets type pitch, margins, page numbers, bold, and wraps long lines.

Contents of this section:

Employed or Retired Inventors  -- beware, your employer may       own your invention.  Not having a written employment contract or      Self-employment may not be an escape. Record Keeping, Invention. Disclosure Document Program  at the USPTO Provisional Patent Application Reasons to consider about patenting,  or not-patenting Manufacturing and marketing tips Negotiation red flags Anticipate losing control of your invention and/or business. Considerations about Licensing, Assignment, Joint Inventors,     Incorporation, Negotiating. Obscure, but key points to consider in any contract, or     business dealing. References  ............................................................ The Employed Inventor --- Beware, your employer may own all or a piece of your invention     and other topics. (Same file as Ramblings, above)

 A BUDGET FOR PATENTING; USEFUL INFORMATION:

Contents:
  I.   BUDGET  ---  What does a patent cost?  A sample
budget.
  II.  Intellectual Property Protection Options In The U.S. Patent Office 
  III. Steps to Patent and/or Producing a Product 
  IV.  Other uses for a the patent and trademark files and searches
  V.   An article on software and other patents

 
 
CONTENTS OF INSTRUCTION FILE:
 
    I.   PATENT APPLICATION PREPARATION
INSTRUCTIONS.
 
    II.  ELEMENTS OF A PATENT APPLICATION,
             DETAILS
AND TEXT OUTLINE FOR SPECIFICATION.
 
    III. APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS AND MAILING CERTIFICATES,
             MAILING
INSTRUCTIONS.

PATENT SEARCHING --- Some basic information about patent searching in preparation for filing an application. Note: A search is one of the things you can easily do yourself. . Saving big $$$ in attorney gouges.

 FREE SEARCH of a U.S. Patent data base. . This is a the beginning step for a more complete search which you may finish up yourself.

 PATENT CLASSIFICATION INDEX, alphabetical.

PATENT CLASSIFICATION INDEX, by class.

Go Directly To the PTO Classification Files.

Go to the US Patent Office's home page.

 Go directly to the Gazette index.

 Go directly to LIST OF OFFICIAL PATENT DEPOSITORY LIBRARIES.

 or else go to the PTO home page, click on PATENTS. The libraries should be indexed on the Patents Page. www.uspto
OOPS --- Various disasters can happen; death of a business partner, lawsuit, divorce, the Taxman cometh, etc.

                                        
CONTENTS:
   I.  "TIL DEATH DO US PART"  Planning for the unexpected.
  II.  A transcript of a divorce case involving patent assets.
 III.  Wills and Stuff.  Comparison of instruments to pass your
                         property to your
heirs.

Your Banker is not your friend.
--- Your banker can raid your operating account for no cause.

Beware of what your Ad Agency likes.
--- Your Ad Agency may be creative and produce clever, cutesy advertising copy, but his clever artistry may insult your customers in ways he cannot imagine as he is blinded by his self admiration of his clever work. And you are likely to fall for it also.
 

Trademark stuff. Notes on trademark registration.

 PTO Publication "Basic Facts about Registering a Trademark".. . Downloaded from the PTO at

PTO Publication "Goods and Services Manual.". . This is the trademark classification index. Must be used in filling out a trademark application. . It is a Zipped document which cannot be displayed on the screen but will be sent to a file.

More Trademark info can be found on the PTO website.
 
 

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These tools are in Quick Basic format. If you find a bug, need them customized for your computer set-up, or if you do not have Quick Basic, Ask, and I will fix and put them into executable .exe code or GW Basic for you.

WHEREIZ.BAS --- A public domain file finder. Searches all directories for file names or fragments of a file name.
Also can look inside all files for a specific word or phrase.

WIPEOUT.BAS --- A public domain file scrubber.
Overwrites a file with junk so when the file is erased, the information is not retained somewhere on the disk. Also can fill all unused disk space with junk.

 SORTBIG.BAS for big files --- A public domain file sorter.
Uses SORT.COM in multiple overlapping passes to sort large files.

 PATENT CLASSIFICATION FILE VIEWER --- A public domain program that screens patent classification data from the PTO website.
Converts classification files from HTML to readable text and excises the non-relevant lines in the indented format classification data. . . . NOTE!!! Program also has a simple, but effective converter for all HTML files and an option to remove the multiple carriage returns (CR) put into non- HTML files by Netscape file retriever.

 CHATTIRB.BAS --- A public domain program that views and changes the attributes of one or more files.
Use to set and unset files to "read only". Recommended for system files like "COMMAND.COM" to be a first line defense against their being infected or changed by a virus. Also, keeps the kids from deleting files. Read- only files cannot be erased.

 DIRUTES.ZIP --- A collection of directory screeners and directory options that show directory information in various formats utilizing screen display space more efficiently than DIR.COM from MSDOS.
 

This cluge is an early cut by a non-webber non-geek. It will eventually be cleaned up as soon as I can figure out the puzzleware.

 HELP!!

Sorry, the some of the intended links to the documents are not made up yet.
Write at the Email address below, and I can get them to you.