Variety Is The Spice Of Work

One thing I love about work, particularly in a small firm, is the variety of work experiences. Obviously as a patent agent my main job function is writing patent applications and shepherding them through the patent office to get patents for our clients, but I also get to experience several other types of work that goes into legal work. I've already mentioned the legal research I've worked on, and some of the legal writing I've had a hand in, but today I've been given the task of updating our firm's website. It has gotten a little stale, and we want to reexamine it from a marketing standpoint and spruce it up to drive more clients our way. It's interesting work because how you present the content is just as important as what the content actually is¹.

I also get do a quick presentation to the firm on a recent patent case (in case you're curious, the case is Honeywell International Inc. v. Hamilton Sundstrand Corp. (Fed. Cir. 2004), there's a good short summary of the case at Patently Obvious), so I've gotten a quick update on the law of prosecution history estoppel², and I get some practice on trying to explain something to people who don't know much about it, including our new patent agent and our new law clerk (I'm sorry, summer associate), neither of which have experience in patents.

Variety is a good thing.

---

¹ Much like writing a blog, where things can easily be taken out of context... see the last few days for examples
² Basically, what you say and do while trying to get a patent application will limit how strong your patent is once it issues... kind of the "Anything you say can and will be used against you" of patent law. Aren't legal terms great? They make everything sound complicated, even if they are simple.