[KenWittlief]

absolutely. You are the expert on your invention and your patent lawyer is the expert on patent searches and patent applications and laws.

A good example, look at the sales receipt most people scribble on a piece of paper when they sell a used car - two sentances at most

and look at the paperwork you get / sign when you buy a car from a dealer!

The holy grail for an inventor is an orginal concept patent - when you are the first with a new idea, you get ownership of all possible implementations of that basic concept/invention - IF your patent is correctly written!

For example: Carlsons patent on Xeroxgraphy - using a charged surface that is altered by light to hold powered ink for the purpose of printing. His original patent was not for a copy machine, not for a printer, it was for all possible applications of that technology. His patent was bullet proof. Many companies sued Xerox for the right to (basically) steal his patent away, but Xerox prevailed for the entire life of the patent. It was literally worth billions of dollars!

the next step down is an implementation patent: when you find a specific way to improve a system or process. Using Xerox again, if you came up with a better way to feed paper into a scanner or a printer, you could get a patent on that part of the system. Then if Xerox wanted to use your new paper feed system on their copiers they would have to lease your patent rights from you - but you could not build copy machines using their patented technology. These types of patents are not as valuable, because a good engineer can always find another way to do the same thing, maybe not as good as your method, but a way that still gets the job done.