I always had a deep belief in the saying of Paul Gauguin “Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses – especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
The author (me only, represented as author in the full text) started my professional career with an engineering in Bioinformatics, a subject which teaches us the use of biological tools in computer language, can say a combination of 60% computer science and 40% biology. After that I did my masters in Biotechnology and thus changed my focus to a complete biological backdrop but finally landed in doing a job in the field of Patents i.e. in Law field. So, in short, a skip from computers->biology->law........seriously great!!...atleast I feel so :-)
The upcoming story gives a glance of how her knowledge in different fields (above mentioned) and various subjects, taught during the course of engineering helped her to draft a patent, thus, letting her realize how everything connects to everything else.
During the last year of author’s college, she experienced the rewards that flowed from academic and intellectual challenges. The challenge of researching and analyzing an unknown subject is the most enjoyable part of academic life.
As a part of her B.Tech thesis she, along with her two colleagues, worked on preparation of a plant based dye and its further use to stain proteins on gels after doing SDS-PAGE. The wide spread use of SDS-PAGE right from the schools, to colleges , to laboratories, to pathologies, to pharmaceutical industries gave the inspiration to come up with a better technique which could have preferences over widely used world known standard dye Coomassie Brilliant Blue dye in terms of cost, toxicity, sensitivity and time. Time and Toxicity was of paramount concern. Time, as overnight destaining of gel was required and thus quick results were not obtained. Toxicity, as special handling and utmost care was required while handling the gels. This thought gave a reason to work in this area. And finally the idea was fetched to improvise and to work on a better technique than Coomassie Brilliant Blue dye.
The logic behind using the extracts from henna was its long time usage to stain hands and hairs which in turn were made from keratin protein. The work was exciting and full of challenges. We knew that the final grading of our performance would be a binary result either a big zero or a great one. The challenge was accepted and target was to do unbelievable in four months.
Author started experimenting. Finally, author and her colleagues landed up with dark brown bands of proteins on gels after doing SDS-PAGE. The work was reproducible and henna extract was found efficient enough to stain all proteins of varying amounts.
This innovative and novel work led them to filing of a patent. The concept of keeping mix-vegetable in engineering, which included electronics, computers, management, biology, law was now transparently clear and justified. Lecture notes of law and surfing the relevant sites such as www.patentoffice.nic.in., gave a complete good start-up for a layman hitting his head in IP constitution. Author read the manual of practice and procedure, mentioned on the site and understood it by chalking out a flowchart. The flowchart, learnt during the computer science courses, aided in the understanding of the first process id and priority process in following up the instruction and procedure step by step. And thus accordingly she made a flowchart of the steps need to be followed during the course of writing and filing a patent
A right start keeps the record of right thing at right time in a right track. So, the initiation step was of main concern. Author went through general information for filing patent application in India, a booklet mentioned on the site. As of now, the first step was kept to put their invention under the litmus test criteria of novelty, industrial usefulness and technological advancement. After strengthening and crosschecking the validity of these three pillars, next was to look whether their invention falls under patentable invention heading or not. After successfully crossing the second hurdle, author was thrown to face the next and most important challenge of hunting the prior art. At this time she again thanked to her engineering knowledge of making Techno Economic Feasibility Reports in which students were asked to search for prior arts of a product or technology using USPTO and related databases.
Right from the school we were in a habit of writing experiments in laboratory workbook.From here the idea and skills of technical writing played the role of a catalyst in providing enrichment and standard to author's work which again followed the basic structure of including an abstract, complete description, results, drawings and pictures in support of foundlings.
Author’s work was now over. She completed the very first step of the flow chart i.e. chalking out the rough draft of patent application. Next was the time to follow the second step i.e. to hire a patent attorney.
It was a proud moment for author and her colleagues, when their midnight oil and hard work paid off. Author was congratulated by the patent attorney as 70% of her work was included in the final draft. Author and her colleagues came into limelight in college when patent got filed under the name “Henna Based Dye, Process for Preparing the Same and Use Thereof in SDS-PAGE Method” having patent application no. 1216/DEL/2007A which further got published in gazette of India. Her and the other team member names scrolled up at the very first page of university’s website. Later she was offered a course in Management in Intellectual Property Right in Queen’s Mary University, London, one of the giants in the patenting field.
After so much of good happenings, she was completely obsessed with the patenting field and guess this attitude of her was the consequence that made her wait for almost half an year to grab a job in the field of her choice. She restricted herself and applied for the jobs in legal area only and all this process took out her all patience. After a hard core struggle (struggle in both sense, nasty remarks which you get from society, friends when you are jobless and also your own concern for your future) of six months, she got her first job as a patent analyst.
In a nut shell, this experience made her views more strong about the fact that only dreaming and doing hard work is not sufficient but you need to hold a belief in yourself when situation doesn’t turn in your favor.
As per her the success mantra, both at personal and professional level is “A belief in a believe make things happen!!!”
No comments:
Post a Comment