Scott McKeown, Patent Attorney

>> My name is Scott McKuen [phonetic] and I'm a patent attorney. It starts out with an inventor coming up with a concept, technical or scientific concept or idea, so transforming that idea onto paper, explaining it in a technical way that someone like the colleague of this inventor could understand it. And then you submit that application to the government for a U.S. patent. And the idea behind a U.S. patent is that the government will give you an exclusive right to that concept or the right to exclude others. And what the government gets in exchange is the right to publish that so that the technology, the idea is that the sort of public policy in general everyone benefits from that disclosure. So the exchange is the technology grows faster because of your idea, and for a limited time you get to exclude others. I do a fair amount of international travel, Korea, Japan. If you work with some of the largest innovators in the world you have to go where they are, which there are a fair number of companies in the U.S. I visit. I'm in Silicon Valley a lot. So it's not a huge part of my job, but I would say I take a couple international trips a year, and I'm in California a decent amount of time. So I work primarily in what's called the post grant space. So after the patent is granted, and then inventors or technology companies try to assert their patent and secure their rights from other companies infringing on their space. So I work with companies like Sony and Samsung and Oracle and eBay to basically guard their businesses from other companies that copy their ideas and concepts or defending them from others that accuse them of doing the same.