Biking in the Rain and 1 Week to LSAT

This evening my roommates (Jon and Ryan) went on a bike ride into Old Town Alexandria for some dinner. We ended up going to The Burger Joint.  The burger and fries were pretty good, but cost $11.84.  The price of living is a little more than Iowa. Haha.  When we started riding back, it started raining.  We had to balance the desire to speed up to get out of the rain and slow down to stay safe and not slide off the newly wet road. We were able to get home safely in one piece.

At work, at lot examiners are busy because the fiscal year is coming to an end this week.  So people need to get their counts for the end of quarter and fiscal year to reach their required production to get a satisfactory rating or get enough counts to get bonuses.  Also the managers (Supervisory Patent Examiners) are busy too with filling out reviews and filling out forms for the signatory program along with there regular duties.  During one of our lectures this week, we went over patents in the news.  It was not over the Apple and Samsung patent battle, but rather about patents that are somewhat embarrassing or should not have been issued for the PTO, for example a patent was issued for a swinging swing, another one had a title was along the lines of how to make a snowman, but actually was a legitimate patent if you looked at the claims, but the title led people or the news not to think so, and another having a claim with the technical name of marijuana.

Finally there is only 1 week until the LSAT.  From now until the day before the test, I will be taking one practice test on work days and two tests on day I have off like today.  Each test takes about 3 hours and 15 minutes.  So this is the big push.  I started this regime on Wednesday.  I have been able to do better than my last diagnostic.  Now I am doing my best, which is exactly what I want to do in all things that I do.  Hopefully I will be able to keep up all the way through the test!  Tomorrow is another diagnostic and afterwards me and a few friends will check out our testing center at Northern Virginia Community College - Annandale.

Have a great week!

First FOAM Completed!

It has happened.  My first first office action on the merits (FOAM) has been approved and sent out to the applicant and his/her attorney for a response!  It took 3 revisions and doing many things (searching, reasoning, writing, formatting) in not the most efficient manner to get it completed.  I felt good sending it off because I set that as my goal and I accomplished it.

Since then I have completed 2 or 3 more FOAMs.  They are currently waiting to be reviewed by my SPE Trainer.  He is pretty busing now because of his training and SPE responsibilities around the end of the fiscal year.  For the government, the fiscal year starts in October.

Also my docket has been completely changed to what I will be working on a regular basis.  I had the other cases because a patent examiner retired and his cases had to go to someone.  Now my docket is full of membrane cases.  It has been a year or two since I have worked with membranes, but it is just another challenge.  Once the LSAT is over, I can read my mass transfer book and read the Journal of Membrane Science to try to get caught up to speed as to the state of the art.

Now is the stretch run to the LSAT.  It is on Saturday, October 6th (2 weeks!!).  I have almost completed all of the homework.  Then all I have to do is take practice tests until the actual test.  I am getting comfortable after looking at old LSAT questions in the homework and taking practice test in a test day environment.  My teacher has been a benefit to me because of insight of the test, material in the test, and how to think and prepare for the test.

There is a small amount of time for other things right now too.  This Friday was a picnic for people in the training academy.  There was BBQ, music, beverages, games, and a raffle drawing at a nearby park.  The weather couldn't have been any better (high 70s and sunny).  This weekend while taking a break, I went with Jon to shoot pool at a local bar with karaoke.  I am not that good at pool, but it was a little roommate bonding.  Today Jon and I cleaned the backyard of all the leaves, branches, and grass clippings.

Finally, I want to thank my Mom.  She got my mind in the right place after talking to her last week.  It was exactly what I needed and now I am in the mindset I need to be in at all times.

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Cor. 10:31)

Iowa Space Grant Consortium

I worked for the Iowa Space Grant Consortium for a few years while I was at Iowa.  Here is a link to a newsletter that lists me as 2011-2012 recipient of an award on page 10.

Iowa Space Grant Consortium August 2012 Newsletter

FY 2013 Calendar

Here is a calendar for FY 2013, it has some duplication as the schedule I posted earlier on the blog, but I think this will be helpful.

FY 2013 Calendar

Keep Plugging Away

This week was part lecture and part examining patent applications.  It was good to get a break from examining full time.  For each of my cases, I would follow the checklist to complete the office action to the best of my ability.  If I was not sure what I should do in a situation, I would do my best to try and figure it out.  If that didn't work I would ask my SPE trainer or more experienced examiners in my art unit.  Every time I talked to them I learned something new and how to approach this situation, which will most likely come up again.

I have submitted some FOAMs, but they have not been sent out because the SPE trainer who will sign off on my actions has not had a chance to review them because the end of the fiscal year is near (October) and he has to do administrative duties for his examiners, which are time sensitive.  Next week we will go over them and see what I did correctly and what I can do to improve.  Also I have the searching, which is probably the most laborious and tedious task of the job, complete for another case and almost complete for another.

As for the LSAT I took my 3rd diagnostic (practice test) today.  The score I received today is not reflective of my true ability.  On 3 of the 4 section I am scoring where I believe my best is, but there is one section is bringing the whole score down.  It is reading comprehension, which I am surprised because that was my best section on the ACT.  I will keep working and focus more on that section up to the test, which is on Saturday Oct 6th.

Finally, I would like to announce that I have completed reading the ENTIRE Bible using my YouVersion Bible App on my phone.  I started this January 2012 and completed this week (September 2012).  It was only supposed to take 90 days, but the readings were lengthy and other activities got in the way.  I am just glad that I was able to complete it within a year (9 months)!

Emails

This is just an information announcement:

If you are registered to receive emails from this blog when there is a new post and you reply to that email, I do not receive the email you sent.  If you would like to get in contact with me please see the below information:

Benjamin Behrendt
40 E. Rosemont Ave.
Alexandria, VA 22301

behrendtbenjaminj@gmail.com
563-370-0640

Have a great day!

New Lab and Almost There

This week we had to move to a temporarily lab for work for a day because our lab received new carpet and paint.  When we came back it looked pretty much the same except for new boring looking carpet and new carpet fumes that smack you in the face every time you walk into the room.  The new carpet was put in because of the contract of the lease the USPTO has with landlord.

My first FOAM is not quite complete.  It has be approved by my SPE (Supervisory Patent Examiner) Trainer, which he has not been able to take a look at it.  He has a lot of duties on his plate including reviewing all of the TC 1700 examiner cases in our lab and the examiner that are in his regular art unit.  Plus he is also helping all the examiners in our lab with questions they have about their specific cases.  So it is not always the fastest.  However in the mean time I was able to finish another FOAM, but I have to make changes after a primary examiner in my art unit took a look at it.  I also have most of the searching done for a different case.  There are just a few claims that I need to find prior art to apply.  So I need some help from a more experienced examiner in my art unit, which is Liquid  Purification/Separation.  As I get more experience I will be able find the art more quickly because of improved searching methodology, knowledge of the art (prior patents), and improved claim interpretation.

This weekend I will do my homework for my LSAT class, go to church, and hopefully watch the Packers.  I am not sure if I get them here.

Now I am listening to the Hawkeyes on the radio through the internet.  Hopefully they will play better than last week.

Bike Ride

Today, Jon and I went to Gravelly Point on the Mount Vernon bike trail.  Its unique location on the edge of the Potomac River and just a few hundred feet from the north end of Reagan's runway makes it one of the best spots in the ASA for airplane spotting. It is about 5 miles from our townhouse.  It was a muggy day and we were sweating profusely by the time we got there.  There were many people because of the holiday.  Here is a video of a plane going overhead, which happens quite often.

Almost Completed

Sorry for the delay in this week's blog posting.  I have a day weekend this week and I have been trying to catch up on my LSAT homework.  I am almost there!  Only 160 pages between now and Thursday at 6 PM.  I have also been biking to and from the grocery store with my backpack full of food.

Last time I talked about my 1st FOAM.  Well it is almost completed.  I submitted it to an examiner in my art unit (AU) twice.  I had to completely re-write it each time.  This is ok because this is the first one and I am learning what to do in my position.  I did make the mistake of action of each, which I think was good practice for me in the future.  The time I sent with my AU examiner helped me see common things in our type of applications and how things are different in my AU than in the Training Academy.  The 1st thing I used the wrong prior art statute to reject my application.  The 2nd time I mixed up the primary and secondary references for a different prior statute rejection.  Hopefully after I re-wrote it that time I got it right!  On Monday I should see my trainer SPE's comments about it.  Hopefully it will be able to be sent off right away or after a few tweaks.  It is important this is right because it becomes part of the record and our public information.  Actually if patent is issued for any of my cases, my name will be on the patent.  Then you will be able to search for patents I have worked on in a Google Patent Search.

I have also started working on the next few cases while waiting for the reviews to come back.  I may have to make a restriction on a application because of two distinct inventions are present due to the claim language.  We will see.  During that time I have been doing searching, a lot of searching.  I am learning many things about this technology that I would have never dreamt I would know.  It can tough sometimes because you have be so mentally focused on one thing for so long and this has to be done in front of a computer sitting down with little human interaction.

Tomorrow I will get more LSAT homework done and go on a bike ride with Jon on the bike trail.