Posted by Douglas Sorocco at May 7, 2005 09:22 PM

Russ gets it. He just gets it.

I view tradeshow attendance as one facet of an ongoing education essential to the practice of patent law, no less valuable than CLE courses. Keeping up with the basic technology and industry trends is just as necessary as knowing the latest CAFC decision.

I have always been surprised at the lack of intellectual property counsel walking tradeshows Welcome to Las Vegas Sign (with and without clients). If anyone out there works in the industry, I would be curious to know the statistics of the number of lawyers attending tradeshows in general.

As Russ mentions, walking a trade show gives you a broader perspective of what is going on in your client’s particular industry – beyond what is in the disclosure document – and jump starts your knowledge of what is happening at the competitive level.

I think it would be fun to use my software program De Jour (MindManager) at a tradeshow – mapping out competing products and potential design arounds/blocking patents would be an interesting brainstorming meeting to have with a client’s technology team.

Doing it in Vegas would just add to the “cool factor”.

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