Patent or perish

Question from a reader:

I want to make the transition from industry to academia, as you are about to.  I haven't published in five years, how can I supplement my CV?  I'm assuming you were in the same boat as I, and most advice I find online is about making the transition to a professorship from a current academic position (post-doc/grad school).

I can't publish my industry work in journals.  The only data of mine that goes public is in FDA filings, so this isn't always the most novel stuff.  I'm somewhere between second-fifteenth author on a couple major publications and conference abstracts where physicians have put me on their work since it's my device they're using, but I didn't really think these counted.  And any data that I got on my own needs to stay within the company.  If competitors take my data and turn it into a successful product then shareholders will be quite upset.  The only way I've been able to publish my work (and keep my CV fresh) was to turn this novel data into medical devices.  This is where patents come in.

With patents, I come up with an idea based on something crazy I think of in the shower (hot, right?) or when I realize that we can turn our data into a device I write a paragraph and attach a couple pics then upload it to our lawyers.  Our lawyers do a prior art search (I can write about the patent process from my point-of-view if you'd like...) then come back to me with how we should write the patent.  Without going into all the details, eventually this results in a plaque with my name and USPTO number on it.

This is how I bridged my academic publications and my industry work.  You've heard of 'publish or perish', in most high-level medical device jobs it's 'patent or perish'.  We get awards, crazy money, and recognition for patents...even if we just submit it and it never turns into a patent...or just a utility patent.  If you're not patenting (thereby preventing the competition from pursuing your awesome idea) then you're falling behind.  Those in the highest levels of scientific leadership here hold tons of patents.

I don't know if this is actually the best thing to do, and some companies choose trade secrets over patents...in which case I don't know what you'd do (advice from other readers, please?).  But this is how I managed to convince academics that I've done something between grad school and my current position.  I'm not sure if this even mattered.  Maybe the pedigree matters more than any patents or pubs...