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PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
A mentor and colleague, the late Doug Goodman, once said to me, “ere are no
boring subjects—only boring books and boring people.” Some people think that
the patent eld generates boring books and attracts boring people. at might
have been the case 50 years ago, when information about patents was relegated to
arcane legal texts and the occasional back-page news story of interest mainly to a
nerdy subculture of lawyers called “patent attorneys.”
Not anymore. e patent eld is now at the forefront of both business and legal
interests. A variety of nonlawyer professionals are now heavily involved in pat-
ents and patenti