LinkedIn: Answers: What’s the most creative thing you’ve seen a patent attorney do?. In one of the answers, the answerer states that it is not a patent attorney’s role to be creative and if he/she is creative…he/she should be FIRED. Agree? Disagree?
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It was the patent attorney at Fairchild who pushed for what became the application for the integrated circuit.
From L. B. Ebert, The Impact of World War I on Present Day Patent Issues, Intellectual Property Today, p. 35 (February, 2005)
–>Robert Noyce and Jean Hoerni had been working merely on an idea about putting a flat plane of silicon dioxide on top of silicon, but patent attorney John Ralls kept asking “What else can you do with this idea?” Noyce then realized that electrical connections could be run along the silicon dioxide, particularly connections among multiple elements, and Noyce’s conception of the IC was born.<–
Additionally, one might ask “creative as to what”? Invention or innovation? A patent lawyer who can (creatively) foresee the innovation, and draft claims accordingly, is invaluable. A patent lawyer who mechanically drafts claims to an invention is merely a scrivener.