| NAPP eNews™/JUNE/2017 |
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Dear NAPP Members and followers, I hope this find you well, and your practices are thriving. If you are reading this as a new member, or are simply new to the patent profession, my goal is to provide updates on current patent issues important to patent practitioners. Safety As a practicing engineer, safety was a constant concern and topic discussed before every meeting. And there were weekly Safety Meetings on top of this. As a result, I felt safer in the refinery and petrochemical complex I worked in than driving the streets! Please be safe and aware in your daily activities, and keep safety in mind in all you do. 2017 Annual Meeting and Conference in San Jose, July 27-29 We have extended early registration rates to June 16! For those that have already registered, we thank you. For those still on the fence, we believe we have a great program scheduled, and your practice will benefit. But the programming is secondary, in my estimation, to the personal contacts new and renewed. Thanks once again to Lisa Adelson and her Committee (now a sub-committee of the new Professional Development Committee) for their work thus far, and to Dan Krueger and members of the Marketing Committee for getting the word out. If you have non-member or former member friends, we offer a 1-day option for $295. This is meant for new practitioners to try-out NAPP, and for former members to renew interest in NAPP. This includes all meals and social activities held that day. Member students and faculty members pay $75 for the full conference, while non-member students and faculty may register for $95. For full details, including hotel, airports, cancellation policy, and more, click here: http://www.napp.org/AMCSanJose. The Marriott block is full but we are negotiating with Marriott to open more rooms at the block rate, and investigating other hotels in San Jose and beyond. For those that prefer something a little different than the name brand hotels, the USPTO Regional Director, John Cabeca, has suggested the Hotel Clariana right next door to the USPTO. If you have interest in being an Annual Meeting & Conference Sponsor/Exhibitor, please go to Professional Development Committee Chair Needed As reported previously, during our March board strategy meeting we felt that NAPP’s professional development offerings needed to be coordinated. NAPP plans to offer webinars to members and non-members for example. The topics of the webinars ought to be coordinated with the presentations of the Annual Meeting & Conference. None of this will move forward, however, unless we can have committee meetings to discuss these activities and make recommendations to the board for implementation. And of course no meetings can be planned unless we have volunteers to staff and chair the committee. If you are interested in getting NAPP on the webinar and podcast track, please step up to help by letting a board member or our ED know. As one member suggested, the problem is not topics to discuss, it is getting a core group of members together for a common purpose. List of US Patents Initially Receiving 101 Rejections As noted last month, several NAPP members have banded together and started an effort to list, on the NAPP website, US patents that have initially received a 101 rejection and that was overcome. As everyone knows, this is a hot topic for patent practitioners, especially in the computer-related inventions area. The list is now available to members on the NAPP website. We thought it best to provide this exclusively to NAPP members first. In the future, NAPP will probably make it more widely available, but as we are seeking to increase NAPP membership, it seems a great bargain at $200 to obtain this list, even if that is your only NAPP benefit. Thanks again to NAPP members Greg Kavounas, Priya Cloutier, Mike Caldwell, Louis Hofmann, and others for their efforts and suggestions, and we look forward to updating the list and making it more widely available. Board Elections Thanks to all that have submitted notifications to NAPP Secretary Dan Beinart of their intent to run for one of the three board positions that will be voted upon this year, your interest and willingness to help is greatly appreciated. NAPP has 9 board members. Each year 3 come up for re-election during the Annual Meeting & Conference (AMC). This is termed a “staggered board”, which many organizations have. Under NAPP Bylaws, the newly formed board meets, usually shortly after the Annual meeting during which elections are held, and the board elects the NAPP officers (president, VP, treasurer, and secretary).
For those running, and anyone thinking of running in the future, please note NAPP has a Board Member Expectations, as well as a Conflicts of Interest Policy, and a Non-Discrimination Policy. NAPP also has a Privacy Policy Patent Maximalists I had a LinkedIn exchange with Judge Randall R. Rader recently. Those of you that attended last year’s Annual Meeting & Conference will recall his stirring lunch speech regarding patents; I was trying to invite him to next year’s AMC, and perhaps this year’s if his schedule allows. Anyway, while trying to find a website for The Rader Group, his dispute resolution entity, I came across some unflattering, and downright derogatory remarks towards Judge Rader. And by extension to patent practitioners and anyone else who believes in patent and other IP rights. A term used in those remarks was “patent maximalist.” I had not heard or seen that term, but I believe I am one. I do not consider patents to be the “be all and end all”, in fact I tell my clients that you first need to be able to sell your product, then perhaps obtain a patent or two that might protect it. It is the product features that are going to sell the product, not the patents. For what it is worth I wanted to bring to your attention that we are now likely to be labeled “patent maximalists”! Humorous Patents
The specification refers to “balls of zephyr” – I had to look that one up! Bringing forward to modern day, there is a podcast for the word “zephyr”- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zephyr
We hope you enjoy this and future editions of NAPP eNews! If you have content you would like share, such as interesting patents, inventors, and other matters of general interest, especially patenting tips, please forward them to our Executive Director John Meidl at [email protected], or the board at [email protected]. Respectfully, 
EVENT CALENDAR - June 2017
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