Honestly, when I enrolled in this course I was slightly terrified. Both 'patent' and 'engineering' are two things I knew absolutely nothing about and when you put them both into one title I thought I was completely screwed. Before I attend the first class I anticipated intense engineering projects that would just go right over my head and I thought I was going to be completely lost. Thank god, I was very wrong with preconception. The moment Professor Lavian started lecturing I realized that patent engineering was in fact extremely interesting and relevant (and only slightly scary). I've gained so much knowledge over the course of this semester and it made me realize that having a basic understanding of patent claims, failures, litigation, infringement, obviousness and abstractness is essential to be successful in business.
Also, the idea of a two-hour lecture was also quite daunting but each class would actually fly by. The way the class was taught kept me constantly engaged. I honestly never knew how interesting of a topic patents were until I came to this class. Patent trolls, smartphone patent wars, the importance of patents to unicorn companies, silly patents, everything we learned in the class is extremely relevant to us and our day to day lives. I never knew just how important and valuable (literally some are worth millions of dollars as you can see in infringement cases) to so many companies in so many different fields.
As an Environmental Economics and Policy major I can see this knowledge I've obtained being utilized in my future careers. Alternative energy and "green" technologies are both fields that are constantly expanding with new things being invented every day and to ensure their success they must be patented, and now that I know about them I can hopefully help in the process of obtaining one.
