Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
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Pursuing patents a regular routine for SEL
Company has team of vice presidents and an attorney who oversee the process
The patents granted for the inventions of Travis Movius and Jessica Smith (see How two SEL employees turned a simple fix into a patented solution) are among dozens Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories obtains annually.
Most are for the work of engineers and scientists, but it’s the strength of the ideas, not the academic credentials of the employees behind them, that determine which patents SEL pursues, said Rick Edge, the attorney who oversees the process.
A patent is a legal document issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that gives its holder the rights to restrict others from making, using, selling the invention for a specified period of time, Edge said.
Patents describe the innovation with enough detail to replicate and use the invention, a feature of the law intended to encourage creative thinking and outline what’s off-limits during the time the patents are valid, he said.
“We do everything from (completing the disclosure) to enforcement through the expiration of the patent,” Edge said.
A team of SEL vice presidents, all engineers, select the inventions they believe are patent-worthy.
Then Edge files the applications, shepherding them through review of the federal patent office, which typically takes two to three years. The office requires a description that teaches “the world how to make the invention,” and also draws “a line around what no one else can do,” he said.
The written portion of a SEL patent is typically between 20 and 30 pages with five to 12 drawings, Edge said.
“The obstacle we almost always have is the patent office will come back and cite a piece of prior art to us and say, ‘Your invention isn’t new because of this prior art,’ “ he said. “At that point, we have to go and redraw the line.”
SEL’s success rate with its patents is around 90%, something Edge said reflects the quality of the analysis before inventions reach his desk.
“(The engineers) who review the inventions are all intimately familiar with our technology and also the rest of the business,” he said. “They all have been working on it long enough that they understand the philosophy of patenting and SEL’s strategy and how we want to pursue patents.”
Exactly how much the patents benefit SEL financially is hard to measure, Edge said.
“Our competitors will notice when we get a patent and they will have to make a decision around it,” he said. “Are they going to try to risk infringement or are they going to design around it? So those are stumbling blocks we put in their way that we can’t really evaluate directly how much benefit they give us monetarily.”
Part of what Edge, whose undergraduate degree is in chemical engineering, likes about his job is the window it gives him on SEL.
“Everybody gets to teach me about their cool inventions and I get to write about them,” he said.
Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.