One week in Palermo, Italy, for the purpose of drafting claims with thirty-four other students from several European countries was a true experience. It was the third EuroSead patent preparation training course taking place in Europe.

The number of participants indicates the success of such a course and shows the obvious need of it for beginners in the field of patent drafting, whether working in the private IP-sector or in industry.

In many cases, when starting in the patent business, daily life in the office does not, unfortunately, always give time for senior practitioners to provide long, extensive lessons in drafting patent applications: in particular, how precisely an invention is to be represented and entirely covered by the claims and supported by the correspondent specification, especially when it comes to the particular wording. In my personal experience there is sometimes a lack of these little tips and hints how to approach an invention and subsequently how to build up its essential inventive features in order to include them in the correct format.

In one morning lecture at the beginning of the course Leon Allen, Australian patent attorney, provided a helpful list of questions (starting with the question: "What does the invention do?") in order to find out, step by step, where the invention is. The lecture was supported and intensified by a workshop in the afternoon. In this particular workshop, students were requested to create a claim for a structure for applying a staple to a sheaf of papers for fastening the papers together. When applying the questions of the list given in the morning lecture it seemed to be an easy task for the entire team to draft the particular claims. Of course, it should be pointed out that team working produces useful discussions from participants with different levels of experience in claim drafting and technical background.

Generally, the morning sessions were held by different lecturers, working in different jurisdictions, such as DE, FR, GB, US, AU and JP. The afternoon sessions were organised as workshops in which the teams of 5 or 6 students tried to meet the task of drafting broad but exact claims of given examples. During the workshops the lecturers were supplying the students with professional guidance and various experiences derived from their particular jurisdictions. The lecturers were actively participating in the group discussions about inventive features, which often led to exciting arguments between students.

Additionally, the structure of the course comprises a rotation system where the lecturers are moving between workgroups, thus supplying the particular team with their different points of view and experiences of their jurisdictions. Further, the rotation system has the advantage of obtaining personal impressions of all the lecturers and the difficulties they had when they started patent drafting. This includes little hints and ideas, namely what kind of expressions are especially nice to use and what words are an absolute tabu for creating claims.

It was natural, that in the beginning of the course the team members' contribution constituted in a mere "gathering together" of ideas in relation to the type of invention which was followed by a confusingly similar main claim being fully anticipated by the next piece of prior art. However, following the to-do-list of questions together with the aid of the lecturers' guidance each team was able to present claims at the start of the next morning lecture (plenary session), which were firstly "new" and secondly provided sufficient "inventive step". In the end, isn't patent drafting all about working on the edge between the deep valley of prior art and the adjacent valley of the inventive features of the invention, though providing broad protection? It is exactly this aspect of patent drafting the EuroSead-course emphasises by providing step by step learning of claim drafting in a very simple manner. This is, in my view, only one reason why for attending this training programme.

A further ground to participate is given by the social aspect of such meetings. In particular, it is not only the side effect of enjoying local cuisine, followed by a nice drink in a bar with a bunch of nice colleagues. It is rather the aspect of meeting trainees more or less of the same age and sitting in the same boat which is accompanied by exchanging impressions, experiences and difficulties arising in daily life in the office when working on patents. In my personal point of view, and I am sure many students do agree, it is an excellent chance to get to know one's own personal strengths and weaknesses by the comparison of personal knowledge, skills or problems in a particular field and identifying areas one has to work on more intensively or should be developed. We profited from many skills and advanced knowledge which we were not aware of prior to the meeting in Palermo.