Styles and formats that are acceptable in biotech patents may be found inappropriate when subjected to scrutiny by an examiner in, e.g., an electrical examining group. The melding of engineering and medicine in diagnostic tools and surgical and treatment devices is well known, as is the use of sophisticated electronic instrumentation for the analysis of chemical and biological materials. In most of these technologies, it is fairly easy to determine whether an invention in one of these areas involves a piece of electronic equipment, which might be better understood by a patent attorney with an electrical engineering background, or an analytical procedure, which would generally fall within the expertise of a patent attorney with a background in medicine, biology or chemistry. Several emerging areas within the bioindustry do not have the history that would permit ready classification in order to easily determine the best patent attorney to sufficiently understand the invention to prepare a written description and appropriate claims to cover the real invention, and later, to interact effectively with the patent examiner who is reviewing the application. These new areas include the disciplines of nanotechnology , bioinformatics and combinatorial chemistry .
Nanotechnology involves tools and machines that operate at macromolecular dimensions.
These tools and machines are constructed using molecular manufacturing techniques, in which complex structures are built using precise placement of atoms and molecules. One look at this title and your first thought might be that s definitely biotech . However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office categorized this invention under Class 365, Static Information Storage and Retrieval , which falls within the PTO s electronics examining group. The majority of current work in nanotechnology is being done from the top down , where efforts are directed toward scaling-down existing machines and devices. Such companies are traditionally seen as engineering companies, and would likely approach patent protection for their developments from an engineering perspective.