By: Josh Sloat

In this month's podcast episode, we’re talking about claims – the fundamental building blocks of a patent. There simply is not a more important concept to grasp in all of patenting. As a former chief justice of the Federal Circuit once famously said, “The name of the game is the claim.” And in terms of what game you’re playing, the claims are where you separate the patents playing checkers from the patents playing chess. 

This is where your patent practitioner earns their money and as you’ll learn today, also where the most costly mistakes can be born. As David Cohen, a Patently Strategic regular, has said in the past, "Ninety percent of the mental exercise in drafting patents is in the strategy of looking around corners, anticipating the future, and trying to capture as many would-be infringers as possible.” How your claims are crafted is literally the difference between a patent being an intellectual asset and a worthless stack of paper.
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In this month’s episode, Ty Davis, Patent Strategy Associate here at Aurora, leads a discussion, along with our all star patent panel, delving deeply into:

​Ty is joined by our always exceptional group of IP experts, including:

​This month's Mossoff Minute, featuring Professor Adam Mossoff, looks at the poorly named Advancing America's Interests Act and its potential impact on the ITC being able to block import of products that infringe on American patents. ​We’re also publishing excerpts as short-form videos on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok.
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​Patently Strategic is available on all major podcasting directories, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We're also available on 12 other directories including Stitcher, iHeart Radio, and TuneIn, so you should be able to find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

By: Josh Sloat

Illustration: Declan Wrede

Join us for lunch at 20Fathoms on October 11th when we'll explore how to leverage patents as one of your startup's earliest and most important assets. When you're first starting out, you don’t have customers, you don’t have revenue, and you probably don’t have physical assets. What you do have are your intellectual assets. These fruits and labors of the mind are not just defensive tools for protection, but chips you can leverage on that glorious path to investment, physical assets, customers, and revenue. Constitutionally enshrined property rights like patents and copyrights allow you to define ownership boundaries around your inventions and creative works, much like the title for your home defines the boundaries of your physical property. And just like your physical property, your intellectual property can be used as leverage, transferred, sold, and leased. And at the earliest stages, these IP assets can get you access to the venture capital you need to scale or to build the bridge from intellectual to real capital and from the garage to the marketplace. 

You'll learn about how to protect these key business assets while avoiding common mistakes in the context of an overall IP strategy in this lunch-and-learn presented by intellectual property expert, Dr. Ashley Sloat. We'll be covering intellectual property like trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents, as well as how open-source IP should be treated. We'll also touch on responsible engagement with employees and vendors, especially around contracting, and typical mistakes made with IP.

This event is hosted by 20Fathoms in partnership with Aurora Patents. This is an in-person event, and there is no charge to attend. Lunch will be provided.

Date and Time: Wednesday, October 11 · 11:30am - 1pm EDT
Location: 20Fathoms | 10850 East Traverse Highway #Ste, 4400 Traverse City, MI 49684
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