I’m thinking back on last week’s Intellectual Property Owners Association Annual Meeting.  Each year it’s one of my favorite events—catching up, meeting new people, and joining some engaging CLE sessions. From the first hello to the last chat at the airport before heading home, it was one engaging, often educational conversation after another. I especially enjoyed the meetings of the Small/Micro Company and Law Firm Committee and the U.S. Patent Office Practice Committee. Both were lively reminders that there’s more to life than a computer screen.

I had a few favorite takeaways and reminders from the CLE presentations:

1. Under the USPTO’s new fee structure, a continuation application incurs lower USPTO fees than a second RCE.
2. Under the new IDS size fee, a duplicate reference counts as two references.
3. Practical aspects of claiming: if infringement of the claim cannot be detected from public information, it may be impossible to justify enforcement.
4. Remember that in drafting the specification, definitions don’t always add clarity.  They may introduce ambiguity into a claim, especially where “or” is used.
5. Lawyers continue to be tripped up by AI citations and quotations that look right but aren’t right.  (Can someone teach the chat engines that “these words” and a citation means “these words” appear identically in the cited text?)
6. A little play-acting can lend some entertainment value to an ethics presentation. 

Thank you to IPO’s members and staff for another memorable event.