Personal Story 1:
Job (US Patent Office):
- Protect people’s interest
- Originally had to come into the office for work hours, now allowed 32 hours of working from home
- Independent
- Based upon production- how many applications can you move
- Examine claims, talk to lawyers
USPTO:
Personal Story 2:
Job (Law Firm):
Law Firm:
- Liked technical writing and writing grants, did a little bit of that as a graduate student
- Talked with someone who gave a career talk at Hopkins to find out more about the job, talked with HR to see what should be included in her application. HR suggested putting her accepted grant in the application as her writing sample.
Job (US Patent Office):
- Everything is by computer
- Look at patent- decide if its new, obvious next step, etc
- Protect people’s interest
- Flexible- work 80 hours in a 2 week period
- Originally had to come into the office for work hours, now allowed 32 hours of working from home
- Independent
- Based upon production- how many applications can you move
- Examine claims, talk to lawyers
- You learn on the job
- Classroom experience for first few weeks to learn patent law
- Disadvantage- self motivation needed, time sensitive- need time management
- Don’t write that much about legal stuff, more the science- this is why the application is or is not unique
- Be clear
- Most of it involves searching
USPTO:
- Various new places popping up, biotech sector of USPTO doesn’t hire much
- Pretty stable job as long as you make production
- Re-examination of patents- need to be a lawyer
- Have unpaid internships
- 70K with benefits, starting out GS9
- Move up quickly
- Need biotech people for policy
Personal Story 2:
- More behind the desk vs. hands on person
- Took patent bar exam, studied for it while in grad school
Job (Law Firm):
- Works at law firm as a patent agent (firm is 300ppl, medium sized)
- Help clients to get a patent- drafting, prosecuting
- Provide legal opinion to client- analyze, search other patents and applications, provide opinion on other patents that will interfere with or other applications that are close to the clients.
- Technical specialist- masters or PhD
- Patent agent- tech specialist with a patent license
- Work in teams
- Learn as you go, hired on background of science.
- Disadvantage- time sensitive, meet deadlines, billable hours system- hours quota of 1900 hours/year
- Need to be flexible with nights and weekend work
- No vacation- just meet hours
- He usually works about 2 weekends out of the month, 35-45 hours put in per week
Law Firm:
- Pretty secure
- Don’t have to be a lawyer
- Studied for patent bar and put on resume when applying for jobs
- Networked with people in the field
- Look pro-active in what skills you are working on/ your interest in the job field
- Sell your transferable skills- work well with people in the lab, multiple project management, etc
- Internships with tech transfer
- 75-90K with benefits
- Can’t move up as a patent agent as in title but will have more responsibility
- To be a director, you need a law degree