I think there are two key issues that I found were the hardest.
1.
Inventors are justifiably proud of how they solved the problem. And so many disclosures (= writeup of the invention that goes for internal review) would focus on "How I solved problem A with solution B". However the focus of patents is actually exclusion. In other words -- what about your solution is critical to PREVENTING someone from replicating it. So brevity and focus are key. If you write about the 10 things that you did but only 2 of them were the core "obstacles" -- then you are diluting the value of your patent. Knowing what to pick to protect is hard!
2.
The value of inventions also lies in detectability. If a competitor were to use my invention (e.g., I patented it to protect it, then shared my insights/process in a conference where my competitor learnt how I did it) -- but that usage is not VISIBLE to the external world, then there is no way to enforce the patent clause. This was particularly important when we had ideas related to embedded systems or communications protocols that added efficiencies which were not necessarily easy to detect/measure by a common user.
This is where the champion value came into play. Getting past inventors to mentor first-time innovators was useful.
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I think there are two key issues that I found were the hardest.
1.
Inventors are justifiably proud of how they solved the problem. And so many disclosures (= writeup of the invention that goes for internal review) would focus on "How I solved problem A with solution B". However the focus of patents is actually exclusion. In other words -- what about your solution is critical to PREVENTING someone from replicating it. So brevity and focus are key. If you write about the 10 things that you did but only 2 of them were the core "obstacles" -- then you are diluting the value of your patent. Knowing what to pick to protect is hard!
2.
The value of inventions also lies in detectability. If a competitor were to use my invention (e.g., I patented it to protect it, then shared my insights/process in a conference where my competitor learnt how I did it) -- but that usage is not VISIBLE to the external world, then there is no way to enforce the patent clause. This was particularly important when we had ideas related to embedded systems or communications protocols that added efficiencies which were not necessarily easy to detect/measure by a common user.
This is where the champion value came into play. Getting past inventors to mentor first-time innovators was useful.