David Jackrel is Of counsel and President of Jackrel Consulting, Inc. He is a Patent Agent registered with the USPTO with extensive experience developing, defending, valuing, and monetizing IP, including prior art landscape analysis, application drafting, and prosecution. He has also worked closely with companies to develop IP strategies, analyze and value IP portfolios, market IP for sales and licensing, and as an expert witness in IP litigation.
David’s primary technical areas of expertise include Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. He has done IP work with companies in a wide range of technologies including optoelectronic devices and systems, such as solar cells, LEDs and telecom systems, semiconductor materials, devices, and processing, nanotechnology, polymeric fibers and textiles materials, additive manufacturing, consumer electronics, and industrial gas processing.
Before entering the patent field, David was the Vice President of Research and Development at Nanosolar. In addition to managing the R&D department at Nanosolar, David also led the growth of Nanosolar’s IP portfolio, including developing U.S. and international patent strategies, managing inside and outside counsel, technical analysis for patent prosecution, and as the technical lead in IP litigation. David was also the Sr. Director of R&D for InVisage, developing quantum dot based light sensors.
Think your invention is sufficiently enabled? If it’s a biological, chemical, or emerging technology invention then you might want to think again. Einstein famously predicted that gravity travels in a wave in his general theory of relativity, and 100 years later, the first gravitational waves were experimentally observed. Some technologies, like those rooted in physics and mechanics, are considered “predictable” by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), while others, like biological and chemical technologies, are generally considered “unpredictable.” It follows that the amount of disclosure required to enable an invention is related to the predictability of the technology, and so-called unpredictable arts require more description to teach a reader how to “make and use” the technology. Similarly, emerging technologies, being less well known, also require more disclosure to be fully enabled. In this month’s episode, of Patently Strategic, Dr. David Jackrel, President of Jackrel Consulting, along with our all-star patent panel, discusses some peculiarities of patenting unpredictable art and emerging technologies.
Just when we thought things couldn’t get worse, the state of patent law around eligible subject matter has fallen further into limbo with court decisions that dissenting opinions have said will “lead to insanity,” can only be the product of “result-oriented judicial activism,” have moved the system from its once reliable incentive to innovate “to a litigation gamble”, and could “threaten most every invention for which a patent has ever been granted.” Despite cries for help and urges to provide clarification from multiple presidential administrations, the Solicitor General, members of Congress, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, IP bar associations, and the Patent Office, the Supreme Court refused to hear American Axle’s recent bid to overturn a lower court decision that invalidated the company’s patent in a closely followed legal battle with rival Neapco Holdings.