Re:New Patent Law Actually Makes Life Harder For Startups
by tzs on Monday September 19, 2011 @03:08PM
(#3014836)
I'm not a lawyer, though I once was studying to be one. In '92 I took a break from programming and went to law school (University of Washington) with the intent of becoming an IP, corporate, tax, and civil rights lawyer.
This was motivated both by curiosity about the law, and I was getting burned out on programming. We were basically a small contract programming shop, specializing in taking on firmware projects that were late, over budget, and failing and turning them around on a fixed bid and tight schedule. It was rather intense, and after four years of it, I needed a break.
Law school was a perfect extended vacation. While I was in law school, my former company had switched from the business of fixing people's messes to developing its own products and selling them, and I had done some programming on that part time and over the summers as I got over my programming burnout.
By the time I was finishing up law school, and only had left writing a paper for the intellectual property seminar I had taken, I hit a case of writer's block. I could just not get going on the topic I had chosen (intellectual property issues of usenet).
By that time the plan was to get the law degree, pass the bar, and go back to my old company as primarily the chief programmer and secondarily as in-house counsel on corporate and IP matters. I went back to work full time that summer and intended to write the paper when the writer's block passed and inspiration struck, however long that took. I never did get around to that, and that's where the matter stands today, 16 years later.
So, combine that with (1) a decent math and science background (BS Mathematics, Caltech, class of '82), (2) an above average ability to recall obscure but relevant snippets from magazines, books, blogs, and whatever other random sources I've read or seen, and (3) sufficient lack of a social life that I have time to Google obsessively before making statements of fact that I'm not sure of, and I can end up sounding like I actually know what I'm talking about!
This was motivated both by curiosity about the law, and I was getting burned out on programming. We were basically a small contract programming shop, specializing in taking on firmware projects that were late, over budget, and failing and turning them around on a fixed bid and tight schedule. It was rather intense, and after four years of it, I needed a break.
Law school was a perfect extended vacation. While I was in law school, my former company had switched from the business of fixing people's messes to developing its own products and selling them, and I had done some programming on that part time and over the summers as I got over my programming burnout.
By the time I was finishing up law school, and only had left writing a paper for the intellectual property seminar I had taken, I hit a case of writer's block. I could just not get going on the topic I had chosen (intellectual property issues of usenet).
By that time the plan was to get the law degree, pass the bar, and go back to my old company as primarily the chief programmer and secondarily as in-house counsel on corporate and IP matters. I went back to work full time that summer and intended to write the paper when the writer's block passed and inspiration struck, however long that took. I never did get around to that, and that's where the matter stands today, 16 years later.
So, combine that with (1) a decent math and science background (BS Mathematics, Caltech, class of '82), (2) an above average ability to recall obscure but relevant snippets from magazines, books, blogs, and whatever other random sources I've read or seen, and (3) sufficient lack of a social life that I have time to Google obsessively before making statements of fact that I'm not sure of, and I can end up sounding like I actually know what I'm talking about!