Litigation-proof patents: a new title

Litigation-Proof Patents: Avoiding the Most Common Patent Mistakes is the title of a new book by this blogger's friend, US patent attorney and author Larry M. Goldstein. The book is so new that it was only published four days ago and no review copy has yet been procured. Having said that, the book's title alone qualifies it for a mention on the PatLit weblog.

According to the information available from the Amazon page from which it is being sold, it

" ... explains the principles of excellent patents, presents the ten most common errors in patents, and details a step-by-step method for avoiding these common errors. Specific patents are analyzed and shown to commit or avoid the most common patent mistakes. 

The book includes four chapters. 

• First, a step-by-step process for writing outstanding patents that capture all the innovative points of an invention and that avoid the most common patent mistakes. 

• Second, principles of litigation-proof patents, including characteristics of good patent claims, Key Claim Terms, patent value, seminal patents, and tips for writing patent applications. 

• Third, the ten most common mistakes that appear frequently in patents, and that destroy both patent quality and patent value. 

• Fourth, five patents that illustrate the concept of “litigation-proof patents”. 

These patents include the Hedy Lamarr frequency hopping patent from World War II, the patents for the board game Monopoly®, and the “slide-to-unlock” mobile phone patent that Apple asserted against Samsung ..." 

Perhaps unsurprisingly this book is intended for (i) anyone writing a patent who wants to achieve the highest-possible quality, (ii) patent evaluators who want to understand whether patents being reviewed suffer from value-destroying mistakes, and (iii) patent managers and heads of IP departments who are managing significant patent portfolios and want to understand the relative quality of their portfolios -- in other words, for everyone except patent litigators.

Litigation-Proof Patents turns out to be the second of three books the make up the author's Patent Quality Series (the first, True Patent Value, is reviewed by Neil Wilkof on IP Finance here and the third, Patent Portfolios: Quality, Creation, and Cost, will be published soon.

This blogger must reveal his personal prejudice at this moment: in his view, the thing that makes a patent litigation-proof is the sad reality that it isn't in anyone else's way so that (i) no-one ever infringes it and (ii) its validity is never challenged.  But that's another matter ...