Class Reflection

Overall, this class is a great experience for me. From this class, I learned a lot about what is a patent, what can be patented, how is it composed, how to test the validity of a patent, what’s the application process, and what does it entail when a patent is infringed, and how to mitigate the risks, as well as patent trolling behaviors and the smartphone patent ecosystem.

Personally, I found this class to be useful enough that I actually switched my Economics honor thesis to a topic that’s patent related. I am currently writing my thesis on understanding the impact of patent lawsuits on smartphone manufacturers’ performances in the public market. I always assumed that plaintiffs are going after the damage rewards or licensing deals, which can definitely be true in many cases. But from the first few classes, I learned the main reasoning behind all these messy and abundant lawsuits among top smartphone players: to slow down competitors’ pace in research and development, which is very different from what I thought from the very beginning.

Also, since I did a lot of independent researches for writing the blog posts, I had a great chance to understand many terminologies and their applications, such as standard essential patents, FRAND, functional claims, patent trolling, patent licensing, etc. Having a good understanding of these buzzwords really helped me doing my research since I had to read a lot of court rulings and dockets.

The reason why I take this class is because I’m going to work for Cornerstone Research as a full-time Economic Consultant. My job is mainly using financial and economic models to quantify damages for lawsuits, so the majority of our clients are big law firms. I’m certain that many cases that I will be working on are patent related. I strongly believe that being able to have a deeper understanding about patents is crucial for me to succeed in the workplace.