Frank Abramonte, Breaking the Patent Attorney Stereotype
By Dennis M. de Guzman
Patent attorneys at times seem to be the Rodney Dangerfield of our profession -- they get no respect. The phrase “nerds in suits” comes to mind. Individuals (other attorneys included) sometimes jokingly refer to patent attorneys as “not real attorneys” and as glorified technical writers.
In other situations, a patent attorney is that “guy in the firm who works with his door closed all the time, doesn’t really talk to anyone else in the firm, no one really knows what he does around here, and has no life and no personality.” People who have worked with patent attorneys will swear that patent attorneys “do not speak the English language.”
Frank Abramonte, a patent attorney at the law firm of Seed Intellectual Property Law Group PLLC, breaks these stereotypes. Yes, he is one heck of a good technical writer and can write a great patent on some “nerdy” subject like electrical power converters for vehicles powered by electrochemical fuel cells. It is also true that he has obtained a patent for an invention entitled: “Method And Apparatus For U.P.C./EAN Symbology Ambiguous Character Compensation By Localized Thermal Energy Dot Adjustment.” Huhhh? A lay person reading that title might argue that there is no “real English” there -- in fact, the only readily understandable things in this title seem to be the two words “method and,” plus the two prepositions.
However, if you ask any attorney or client that has worked with him, that person will say that Abramonte is not only a good patent attorney but also a good attorney. Besides preparing patents, he counsels clients on the legal aspects of patents and other intellectual property from a strategic, business and legal point of view that you would not get from your run-of-the-mill glorified technical writer. Also, when attorneys ask their colleagues if they can recommend a good patent attorney in Seattle, Abramonte’s name is mentioned more often than not.
So, how did he get here? He started in the trenches, so to speak. Abramonte obtained his Bachelor of Science in aerospace from the University of Colorado in 1984 with an emphasis in computer science courses. After graduation, he found himself at Boeing, working as an engineer developing various software interfaces related to the design and analysis of the airplane production process.
Like most patent attorneys, he eventually felt the need to explore new areas of personal growth, rather than being a career engineer. So, after some extensive traveling in the Far East where he learned to speak Mandarin Chinese, Abramonte decided to enroll at the University of Oregon School of Law and graduated from there in 1992.
Unfortunately, the market for patent attorneys in 1992 was horrible -- no one was hiring. “I could not buy a job,” Abramonte recalled. So, with the initiative and motivation that he still shows today, Abramonte decided to hang up his own shingle. As a sole practitioner, he began practicing in various areas of law, not just intellectual property. “It’s quite a daunting experience. I basically needed to teach myself everything I needed to know.”
He finally got his first big break when he joined a small local intellectual property firm and received valuable mentorship from its experienced patent attorneys. In 1997, he joined Seed and Berry LLP (now Seed IP Law Group), where he became a principal in 2001.
Abramonte had his choice of firms to join in 1997, but chose Seed. “Seed was the place where I could get excellent training from its seasoned patent attorneys,” he recalled, “plus they had a diverse base of clients with challenging projects that required significant software expertise.” Moreover, “Seed is one of the few places that stresses the importance of understanding the client’s technology and its other legal needs from a business and strategic point of view. Not many patent firms provide that value-added service -- Seed doesn’t want its attorneys to just prepare patent applications,” Abramonte added.
Under this backdrop, Abramonte works on patents covering a wide range of technologies, predominately in the software and electrical engineering fields. His client counseling involves advising clients as to how to best monopolize and grow their patent portfolios, as well as advising offensive and defensive strategies that they should adopt.
Among his more significant clients are Intermec Technologies (bar code scanner devices), Ballard Power Systems (alternative power systems, such as fuel cells and related electronic circuitry, for motor vehicles) and a wide range of other clients in the Internet, telecommunication, medical device and software fields. The products that these companies wish to patent often involve extremely complicated technology, which challenges even the most seasoned of engineers, let alone a patent attorney.
The clients Abramonte and the Seed Group serve range from individual inventors with great ideas to large corporations with goals of maintaining and procuring large patent portfolios.
“I especially enjoy working with smaller clients and helping them to become successful,” Abramonte said. “You get to work with them when they are small start-ups with maybe just a handful of employees without much knowledge of intellectual property, and then help them to protect their key technological assets and to identify areas of potential revenue and risks.
“It’s an evolutionary process where the company is heavily reliant on the patent attorney for advice. When that company becomes successful, the feeling is comparable to what a parent may feel seeing a child graduate from school.”
As an example, Abramonte is particularly proud of the patents he has secured for a company called Mindplay LLC. “Mindplay was a very small start-up with only two employees,” Abramonte said, “but they had a great invention for automatically monitoring casinos and gaming/wagering.”
Eventually, Alliance Gaming (better known as Bally Gaming), one of the largest gaming companies in the world, acquired Mindplay and its patents, with Abramonte playing a key part in the intellectual property aspect of the acquisition. “Mindplay’s original two employees/inventors did very well when their company was acquired, and their patented technology is now ubiquitous in almost all of the major casinos. It makes my job very satisfying when success stories like that happen,” he said.
When asked to describe his “most interesting” patent, Abramonte paused for a moment of thought. The “moment” turned into several minutes of deafening silence. Finally, he replied “Well, I guess some stereotypes about patent attorneys are not entirely false. I’ve worked on a lot of patents that are very interesting and important to engineers but would put the average person asleep within minutes -- really nerdy boring stuff. But there are a few interesting patents.”
One of these is a patent he obtained for “telling a story,” as described in U.S. Patent No. 6,544,040. This patent is generally directed toward an interactive story/narrative that allows a user to interrupt the narrative to more deeply explore the mental impressions of a character and then pick up the narrative from the point where the user left off.
“These types of patents are fun to write because they do not involve the heavy-duty complexities of software, electronics and science and engineering, but instead allow me to get involved with more creative, down-to-earth elements that are easily understandable to the non-technical person.” Abramonte explained. “It’s a refreshing change of pace.”
Indeed, a goal that Abramonte tries to achieve with each patent, and to also teach to more junior attorneys at Seed, is to create a document that adequately describes the important technical features of the invention, yet still conveys these features in a way that can be understood by a non-engineer and a non-patent attorney. This balance is important because, ultimately, it may come down to several grandmothers, retired truckers or other non-engineers sitting on a jury to decide whether a patent is infringed or valid.
“Writing a good patent is just one part of the job,” Abramonte stated. “A patent attorney also needs to be able to be a skilled, responsive and reliable attorney for his client, not just a glorified technical writer.” He added that it is “very fulfilling to be able to work with other attorneys at Seed who share this same philosophy of client service, and putting in the time and effort to ensure that clients get great service at a fair and reasonable price. Clients really appreciate that.”
For instance, Abramonte is typically in the office every day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. This performance is indicative of his dedication to providing quality service to his clients and also indicative of clients’ high demand for his services.
He hopes that he will be able be cut back on his hours in the future so he can spend more time with his wife, Marilyn, and their two young children. After all, Abramonte is clearly not one of those “nerds in a suit with no life.”
Dennis de Guzman is a principal with the Seed Intellectual Property Law Group, specializing in software and electrical engineering patents. He holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Seattle U. and is a 1996 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law, where he served with distinction on the Law Review. He can be reached at 206-622-4900 or DennisD@SeedIP.com.
