Patent Wallah

From the desktop of Adenike Adebiyi.

A wallah is "a person in charge of, employed at, or concerned with a particular thing"¹. I am concerned with patents, so I am a patent wallah.

I followed in my father’s footsteps and studied mechanical engineering. I earned a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering, summa cum laude, with a minor in mathematics, from Mississippi State University in 1993, ranking 2nd in a class of 108 engineering graduates and 9th in a class of 666 total graduates (never mind the number 666; there was nothing devilish about my class). I went on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, where I earned a M.S. degree in mechanical engineering in 1996.

My graduate thesis focused on use of genetic algorithms to solve design optimization problems. Genetic algorithms operate on the survival-of-the-fittest principle. It involves generating a population of chromosomes. In my research, the chromosomes had genes with real values instead of the usual integer values selected from the set [0,1]. Each chromosome represented a solution in the solution space, but not necessarily a local or global optimum. The population evolved through selection, crossover, and mutation. The parents with higher fitness values have a better chance of being selected for crossover, i.e., formation of a new offspring.

I started my work in patent law in May of 1997. I began my practical training under the supervision of Tim Trop, while he was at Fish & Richardson P.C. of Houston, and later on under the supervision of John Osha, first while he was at the same Fish & Richardson, and later on when he started his own firm under the name Rosenthal & Osha L.L.P. (this firm has since morphed to Osha Liang LLP). I took the patent bar exam in August of 1997 and became registered to practice as a patent agent before the United States Patent and Trademark Office in April of 1998.

My first exposure to patents was in a manufacturing seminar at MIT under Professor Emmanuel Sachs, a pioneer in the field of rapid prototyping, during a discussion about Pilkington Brothers and the float glass process.

I founded Dewipat Incorporated in 2001. Presently, I manage daily operations at Dewipat Incorporated and provide patent law services to corporations. Services include drafting patent applications, prosecuting patent applications, filing documents with the patent office, managing patent portfolios, and acting as a liaison between domestic clients and foreign agents in foreign-filed patent applications.

As a patent agent, I have drafted and prosecuted several hundred patent applications. I have drafted patent applications in fields such as drug delivery systems, emissions control, integrated circuit fabrication, optics, pharmaceutical formulations, photonics, software, suspension systems, and oil/gas exploration, drilling, and production and for companies such as Corning Incorporated; Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Schlumberger Technology Corporation; Hydril; ALZA Corporation, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson; Lord Corporation; and National Oilwell Varco.

1. Dictionary.com, "wallah," in Dictionary.com Unabridged. Source location: Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wallah. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com. Accessed: October 31, 2009.