[btrettel]

For an accessible introduction to patent legalese, I'd recommend taking a look at a recent edition of the book Patent It Yourself by David Pressman. I can't say it'll cover all that I learned as an examiner, but it's well written and covers a lot.

Also: A lot of the legalese I encountered as a patent examiner was "lexicographic definitions", that is, where a patent applicant writes somewhere in the patent specifications that a certain term or phrase has a particular meaning. Applicants didn't always make those easy to find... I recall one where (as I recall) they defined "insulation" to including something that can cool something down, which strikes me as simply wrong and confusing. That definition was basically hidden right in the middle of the patent application. It was necessary to find that definition to understand the claims. If the term is something I hadn't seen before then I would have just search for it, but for something common in the field I examined like "insulation", I wouldn't normally search for that. This is really annoying and unfortunately okay under USPTO rules.