patent pitfalls: common mistakes and how to avoid them (feat. Austin Bonderer)

So tell me a little bit about your experience as being a patent attorney.

Tell me how it kind of all started for you and what kind of made you interested in doing this, uh, career choice.

Well, it actually kind of started, um, [laughs] you know, it was one of these things.

Um, I grew up in southern Mississippi, and my dad's house almost burnt down one time.

So, um, that summer I was crawling up in his attic wiring, uh, smoke detectors all throughout the house.

And I don't know, but I'm sure you're aware southern Mississippi summertime attic is not a good place to be.

So I always thought there had to be something better.

So when I finally went off to school, and I've always kind of had that idea since that point, when I went off to engineering school, my thesis was on an invention that I had, which was basically at the time I took...

This was at the beginning of wireless.

You're too young to know this [laughs].

But you know, the first thing that really came out was like wireless doorbells, and they were all the rage.

But it was just a cheap little button and receiver over there.

So what, uh, what I did was I got a, uh, uh, two smoke detectors, wired them together with the doorbell stuff, and th- so basically what it would be is that what we have now is the wireless smoke detection systems that basically like if one goes off, it'll send out a radio signal to the others, so they will relay through the house.

That way you don't have to wire them anymore, and that was kind of the, uh, idea that I had, um, when I was a kid.

So that kind of pushed me towards patents.

So I looked as part of my thesis to look at how w- I would patent such a thing and just, you know, explored that in the paper as well.

Um, so after that I was interested in it.

I wanted to work for the University of Virginia's patent transfer, uh, office, or technology transfer office, and because who doesn't want to live on a college campus the rest of their life? It's kind of like Wonderland [laughs].

You know, it's, it's just a perfect little place.

And they were like, "Look, uh, you don't have enough experience." So at that point I decided to go, after graduating from engineering school, I went to work at the patent office.

And when I was there, went to law school at night, and the rest is kind of history.