Clare - On Planning and Patents

I'm writing this at the end of a long day! This morning, my academic supervisor came to Hursley to meet up with myself and my industrial supervisor...it's something we do a few times a year, to make sure we're all in the same place. The meeting involved a lot of planning out what remains of the year ahead - I'm feeling very organised with my Gantt chart! Skills like estimating how long tasks will take are of course really helpful whatever role you're in.

So, outside my day job I've been pursuing some patent type work. I'm really interested in innovation, and am part of a small (5 person) patent club. Let me talk about the process:

We meet up once a week to throw ideas around...when we find something we think might be valuable, we'll all go away and search online to check if it's been done before. If we can't find anything, that's great! We'll write up a 'disclosure', which describes the problem and any existing solutions, our solution (and how it's different from the existing material), and how you might implement our solution. Writing such a document in a clear way (that is accessible to a patent attorney, who won't think as we do!) is quite a challenge.

Once the document is put together, you hit 'submit' and wait...there is a peer-review process at Hursley where willing volunteers with some expertise in the area of disclosures will spend some time looking over them and submitting comments - and a recommendation of whether to pursue it or not.

It can be rather hard work, but it's very fulfilling (and the feeling when you get your first patent through is awesome!) It's also a really good way to challenge yourself to think about unusual stuff that's beyond the scope of your day job.