Bold Today Show Episode 143 | Fun in the Sun: The Patent Summary

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Posted on August 17, 2023

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By J.D. Houvener
Patent Attorney and Founder

Hi everyone, I’m J.D. Houvener, your host of the Bold Today Show, where you, the inventor or entrepreneur, get your daily dose of inspiration so you can go make the world a better place.[Music]

We are still in our 10-part series, now in part six, looking at the detailed specification of the patent that Lonnie Johnson invented, the Super Soaker. This is the summary, and the summary of a patent is within the second page, the second main written description part. We’ve gone through the first page, we’ve looked past the abstract, we’ve already talked about the drawings last week. This is where I start getting into the heart of what’s being described here in the invention.

But before we get to the detailed description, which is still yet ahead, the summary of the invention is just that, it’s a summary. Now, you can see we’ve got pulled up here on the screen that it’s just a few paragraphs long, a few hundred words, and that’s on purpose. The attorney did a great job here of doing exactly what they should have. The summary of invention, at least in terms of the patent document, shouldn’t be embellished. We just want to purely describe in the summary what’s being claimed, and you’ll kind of hear me say that again this week as we get into the detailed description, in that there’s sometimes a tendency when you’re talking about your passion or the inventor’s baby, you want to talk about it forever. But in the summary, it’s important that we keep things very concise and right on point, only describing the version, the one version that’s being claimed in that initial set of claims. The main reason for that is that many embellishments or improvements that the attorney or the inventor are describing here in the specification should not be captured in this invention. They can actually be filed as separate continuation or continuation-in-part applications down the road.

So, this is the summary. This is a key part of the patent specification. We’re gonna be talking about the more detailed description later on this week with you when we get there. So again, hope y’all are having fun with your Super Soaker series. I’m your host J.D. Houvener of the Bold Today Show. Have a great day, everybody. Go big, go bold.

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