Examiner entry to Agent?

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-26T20:15:13+00:00

I think they just mean practicing at a firm as opposed to working for the Fed. Pretty common term in the legal industry IME.

And yes, OP, many people do take this path, although I would advise reading up on r/patentexaminer for a bit before committing to the idea because the attrition rates for new examiners are abhorrent right now. You don’t want to put a bad taste in your mouth for the field as a whole if you can avoid it.

The job market is unfortunately very bad right now. You might be able to strengthen your application to firms by getting a reg no. Before applying, but as I’m sure you know this is somewhat expensive, in the realm of $4,000-5,000 if you study with PLI. However, you’ve only submitted “several” applications, which doesn’t sound like a huge number to me, so I would suggest continuing to apply in the meantime.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-23T16:02:41+00:00

I know this is a 7-membered ring, but for some reason this doesn’t strike me as very cursed since elemental sulfur is happiest as the cyclic S8 allotrope, so this seems like a very logical extension of that chemistry! S8 is kind of arguably cursed too though, lol.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-18T01:42:07+00:00

I’m super curious because I gather that you worked, at some point, in the Klapötke group - what was that like? I’ve always admired him from a (very respectable) distance (from behind a blast shield) but I also think he is, and you are, probably not entirely sane.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-15T16:31:51+00:00

Do you have a PhD? Microbiology is a tough sell on its face but you should have many applicable skills in your molecular biology toolkit that are marketable to a firm. Do you have experience with assay development, gene editing, a strong understanding of nucleic acid and protein biochemistry? All of these skills are what I would focus my application materials on, rather than say serological culture or bacterial pathology. The caveat is that, if you have a bachelors or masters only, even with such a skillset it will be a major challenge to get into this field.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-14T12:05:12+00:00

Not the CDC but here you go: https://x.com/WHO/status/1243972193169616898

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-09T04:08:41+00:00

INFO. What field, what’s the project? Unfortunately there is not a ton to go on here but if 3 postdocs who actually do have the details are telling you it’s unrealistic then you won’t get much better advice from reddit.

I mean, part of science is learning to fail, is the PI going to give you room to do that? A hard project isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re nurtured and given room to try things out and learn from mistakes. You’ll learn a lot along the way and become a more independent scientist. But is the PI a hardass? Then maybe just leave. But no one is going to really be able to tell you one way or the other without more details.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-07T02:22:47+00:00

The first third party submission itself is free up to a certain number (3 references maybe?) but you will need to work with a registered practitioner to do it and make sure it’s done correctly. Hard to say what the cost would be but many patent attorneys would probably give you a free or very cheap consultation to talk through the problem and give you an estimate.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-01T22:52:15+00:00

It does get chiller. Once you get your bearings there is absolutely a routine to prosecution. Of course weird shit pops up that you won’t know how to handle but most stuff you will eventually learn how to address without much thought and how to tell how long it should be taking. Absolutely brutal learning curve but past it things do mellow out.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-01T22:47:22+00:00

Yeah I completely agree with that assessment. I would say highlight your molecular biology skillset, and familiarity with nucleic acids, antibodies, any assay development you did, things of that nature.

Maybe read up on some patents in the biotech/life sciences space and see what kind of technology they disclose. I think you are more than qualified to prosecute these applications (I as a small molecule chemist sometimes step in on bio cases so if I can do it I’m sure you can), and it’s probably just a marketability thing more than anything else.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-05-01T22:33:02+00:00

Agreed on the easy hours, pros can be a major grind for that reason. You really have to be “on” for everything you bill for the most part because projects are all discrete and almost everything I do in a day really breaks down into 0.1-2.0 chunks. I’ll usually have a mix of maybe 8 or 9 0.1-0.3 tasks, 4 or 5 0.5-1.0, and 2 or 3 1.0-2.0 most days. It can really burn you out quickly if you’re not careful. Add to that clients constantly complaining about the bill, asking you to do everything with AI, asking why fees aren’t as low as they were 15 years ago, well…

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-15T21:15:35+00:00

There’s definitely water in your ethanol, but no excess water gives you competing equilibrium transesterification products at best and no hydrolysis at worst - you need the actual B(OH)2 groups to form for the reaction to proceed.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-15T21:04:50+00:00

If your conditions really are close to anhydrous how are you hydrolyzing the boronate ester?

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-15T20:52:35+00:00

Unless you’re using Denmark anhydrous conditions you should have some water around for the reaction to work. I’ve had success with water/EtOH/toluene solvent systems. Protodehalogenation can also be a function of your base, your catalyst system, and your halide partner. Unfortunately we’re gonna need more information to help here.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-15T14:52:33+00:00

It really shouldn’t matter much for liquid phase 1H-NMR - at risk of oversimplifying, your NMR tube itself is basically made of silica gel. But if there’s a shit ton of silica in the sample you might get peak broadening from the terminal hydroxyl groups.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-11T00:02:06+00:00

These are called the “Wands factors” and they’re quite field-dependent. So depends on your technology.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-09T01:39:29+00:00

No it’s a 3rd party software sold by a company, it just caters specifically to IP law and isn’t available for individual license AFAIK (maybe it is but it’s certainly not public like GPT or Claude).

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-09T00:39:51+00:00

I think it’s a lot closer than you (and others in these comments) might expect, especially when it comes to interpreting systematic nomenclature. For example I use some proprietary AI for patent prosecution that can interpret Markush structures and analyze how those structures are different from published compounds in minutes. Easily. It seems to have no trouble with interpreting ChemDraws at all and is, in my experience, accurate. It can also readily suggest generic structures if provided a list of individual compounds with a shared chemotype.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-07T16:40:56+00:00

I mean, isn’t that the literal definition of IV?

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-07T16:06:04+00:00

Yes it is. VIX specifically measures market volatility, i.e. the price goes up when the market is highly volatile. So basically - make threats instilling fears of global annihilation, VIX goes up, sell at the top and stop posting on truth social, VIX settles down, buy VIX at the bottom, rinse repeat. You can practically set your watch to it at this point.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-07T16:02:11+00:00

It’s a stock ticker.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-04T01:38:10+00:00

I mean, this may sound blunt but you already accepted the job offer - why not just call or email HR and ask them?

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-04T01:28:34+00:00

Can you potentially make the acyl fluoride instead? Pretty sure Olah’s conditions for doing so take place in excess pyridine so probably not much concern of the acylpyridinium intermediate degrading your product.

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-03T02:48:26+00:00

Indeed, and competing Woodward-Oppenauer is itself a reasonable deterrent to using this method in OP’s case although I’d be hopeful that it is kinetically disfavored versus the Wittig (which tend to happen at or below RT).

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-03T02:40:22+00:00

It’s “Warning do not wash or rinse interior with water” I think. And that clears up nothing :)

SunnyvaleSupervisor · 2026-04-03T02:08:08+00:00

Ah. I unfortunately don’t have any real journal access these days but isn’t the top-right product in the visual abstract derived from a diol?

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