EE5190-001 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING GRADUATE SEMINAR

Spring 2017, Fr 11:00 am 11:50 am, Rm 112 NH

Student Name: Mav ID #: Date:

04/07/2017

Speaker Name: Seminar Title:

Dr. Mark Dodd What is Intellectual Property and Why Should I Care?

Five Keywords: Intellectual Property, trade mark, trade secret, claims, patent

Talk summary:

Dr. Mark Dodd works for Sidley Austin LLP. He was a trained engineer and worked for Lockheed Martin
for many years before he changed his career path to become an attorney of intellectual property. He
gave a talk on what is intellectual property and why should one care about it. Intellectual property (IP)
can be classified into patents, designs, trade dress, trade secrets, copyright and trade mark. IPs can be
soft IP in case of service or hard IP in case of products. Patents are the right to exclude than the right to
make one. An example of most valuable trade mark is Google, which is worth 109 billion USD. An
example of service mark is mastercard logo. An example of most valuable trade secret is Coca-Cola.

IP is important because it makes life easier, it standardizes making products and overall work in the
world. We need to protect IP to encourage innovation, improve existing and ground breaking
inventions and finally it is about protecting the money you could make out of it. Every engineer needs
to be aware of the process of filing an IP and how to protect his work. A patent application can be filed
with the US patent and trademark office. A patent application has drawings, specifications and claims.
The prosecution will be done in presence of an examiner to make sure the work is unique. To have a
copyright one needs to create something and register it with the copyright office. Computer code,
books, sounds recordings and movies are some examples of copyrighted materials. A trademark needs
to be registered with the USPTO, if its too similar to an existing TM then it is a contested application.
Types of trademarks include drawings, figures, sound and color. To figure out if you need to file a trade
secret or patent, it depends if you want to keep it a secret forever or 20 years (in case of patent) and
accordingly bear the costs associated with it.

The talk went to get interesting when the speaker started to do an interactive session of claim drafting
exercise on peanut butter jelly sandwich. For example, one can patent the method of making these
sandwiches on a large scale. The interactive session gave us an insight into how to describe the claims
associated with a product. It is not enough to invent or create something, it is highly important to have
it protected legally so that you are not cheated by anyone.

Signature: Sai Santosh Sasank Peri