Jonathon Western &

Behmke Innovation Group LLC

Mission

Patent law – it’s my day job. But I’m also an unapologetic sports nut. Whether playing, coaching, or simply watching, from a young age sports have been and still remain a personal passion.

Now, you might think these two worlds - sports and patents - are entirely unrelated. What could the action-fueled sporting industry possibly have in common with the yawn-inducing field of patents?

In short: competitive advantage.

In this blog, I explore the collision of these two worlds from the perspective of a dual patent attorney and sports enthusiast. I dive into the technological side of sports and discuss the innovations that underlay modern athletics. The results reveal the often-surprising ways players in the sports industry - companies, organizations, and even the athletes themselves - are utilizing patent protection to gain an advantage over their competitors.

At Behmke Innovation Group LLC, we call this the “Protected Advantage™”.

Let’s get going!

History

Welcome to Performance Patents!

I am a Boston-based, Michigan-grown patent attorney with a decade-plus of intellectual property experience. Specializing in patent application drafting and patent prosecution, I work with clients, large and small, to obtain patents that broadly protect their innovations. Our practice has found success in putting client’s needs first, ensuring patent decisions are uniquely tailored to each client.

Now that we’ve covered the obligatory professional bio, let’s turn to the other half of this blog, shall we?

I am an unabashed sports fanatic. This passion developed early on, as I played in virtually every sport that I could. Whether on a team or in the backyard, from baseball to basketball, and soccer to golf, sports became a defining feature of my childhood. While I wasn’t playing in sports, I was following them – obsessively. I used scorebooks to track stats in baseball games by hand. I read and memorized college football rosters in the Street & Smith’s yearbooks. I kept a card collection that eventually got out of hand. And when sports weren’t on TV, I played the Strat-O-Matic boardgames (anyone else play Strat-O-Matic?). Nowadays, my passion has shifted to endurance activities – running, cycling, and hiking, to name just a few – and of course, striving to pass along this sports obsession to my own kids.

What’s more, I’m an enthusiastic follower of a side of sports that is often overlooked – technology and innovation. Throughout this blog, I provide a sense of my own opinions on, and sometimes personal experience with, the sports tech being dissected. I’m also a member of the International Sports Technology Association (ISTA) and the International Sports Engineering Association (ISEA), both of which are dedicated to the continuing development, education, and promotion of sport-related technology.

With the help and support of my colleagues at Behmke Innovation Group, this blog is a place to discuss Protected Advantage™ and the field of patenting sports inventions and related technologies. We hope you enjoy reading this content as much as we enjoyed creating it. If you are interested in more information about me or my firm, please visit BIGIPLaw.com.

If you wish to contact me directly, please use the submission form on our Contact page, here.

-Jon Western