On May 17, 2006 I retired from The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) after almost 40 years of service, the later half of which were spent managing P&G's foreign patent filing and prosecution effort.
A native of Chicago, Illinois, I joined The Procter & Gamble Company in 1966 following graduation from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. My initial assignments for P&G were in research and development, working on the teams that developed new products and product improvements for the Company. During my early years at P&G I continued my education in chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati (Evening College), completing the required course work in their Master of Science program. (The required thesis work was put on hold and finally abandoned due to changes in my work assignment at P&G.)
My introduction to the legal field came in 1980 when I was place on special assignment as the technical advisor to outside counsel in relation to a number of product liability lawsuits and eventually several patent litigations. I was formally transferred to the Patent Division (now the IP Division) in 1987 and became registered before the United States Patent & Trademark Office as a Patent Agent in 1988, and joined the section responsible for international patent filing and prosecution. A short time later I was promoted to manage the foreign filing and prosecution effort with responsibility for filing and prosecution in Canada, Latin America, Middle East, Asia and the Pacific regions. (European filing and prosecution was handled from our European technical centers.)
Under P&G's organizational structure, teams of patent agents and attorneys work with and on the research and development teams. These agents and attorneys are responsible for drafting, filing and prosecution of the first-file patent application on any invention. As the end of the priority year approaches, the case is transferred to the international group (now Global Patent Services) to manage and affect the filings in additional countries under the Paris Convention (and now under the priority provisions of the WTO). In response to an increasing need with the Company to gain additional time to make the expensive, final decisions on where it was commercially important to file patent applications, I headed the effort to convert P&G's foreign patent practice from a direct national filing practice to a practice under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
Procter & Gamble's practice under the PCT quickly grew to the point where P&G was the largest single PCT applicant in the world. P&G held this distinction for several years, until other organizations filing more patents internationally recognized the advantages of practice under the PCT. The case volume of Procter & Gamble's PCT practice still remains near the top.
During my tenure as manager of P&G's foreign filing operations, I have studied and practiced under individual national patent laws in many nations and have gained a tremendous amount of experience in the provisions of the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Over the course of managing the preparation, filing, and national/regional phase entry of over 8,000 PCT applications, I have utilized all of the available features of the PCT and have probably stumbled into and successfully managed my way out of every problem issue that exists under the PCT and most foreign patent laws. Because of this experience, I have been privileged to speak on P&G's foreign patent practice, with concentration on our PCT practice for organizations such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), Intellectual Property Owners Association, Licensing Executives Society (LES), plus a host of individual regional patent/IP law associations. I also teach the basic and advanced PCT course for the Patent Resources Group (PRG), headed by Professor Irving Kayton.
I have lectured on PCT practice for WIPO and others around the world including the countries of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China (Peoples' Republic of), Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea (Republic of), Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa (Republic of), Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, and Uruguay.
Additionally, on the first of March 2006, I became a consultant for WIPO answering questions about, giving training on and promoting use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty in the United States.
With my retirement, I will be privately consulting, sharing my experience and knowledge of international patent practice, specializing in the PCT.
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