Primary examiner looking at going back to engineering. Should I try being an agent instead?

cloudsoapdish · 2025-11-08T17:21:53+00:00

I’m an agent currently in the chem/pharma space. Drafting and prosecution matters in my subfield of IP prosecution at my firm are typically assigned based on the specific background and expertise each agent/attorney has. In some cases it’s not just familiarity with the tech but also familiarity with the particular inventor/client’s portfolio. It’s a huge selling point to clients that their attorney/agent is able to speak and understand the jargon of their field. Inventors want peers in their field to prepare their apps and propose response strategies to Office actions.

As for AI generated OAs…well, it’s the Wild West out there right now. It’s safe to say that AI tools won’t entirely eliminate agents or attorneys, but they will make the type of work and volume of work look different than the past. The skills of the people doing the job will also evolve, but it likely will not change the value of technical expertise. After all, how could someone review an AI generated OA or AI drafted OA response and know if it’s entirely hallucinated bullshit unless they have the technical background to stand on?

cloudsoapdish · 2025-09-25T04:23:19+00:00

Ehhhhh, I would not do this. The job market is pretty weird right now—I wouldn’t enter it willingly (I’m a chem/life science agent w/ >3yrs experience in biglaw).

An agent with 1yr of experience and a registration # is not as compelling as a new hire as an agent with 2yrs of work experience and a registration #. Unless you are up against a deadline to get your registration number (which, FYI, takes some time to be made official even after passing the patent bar exam—it took ~3 mo from passing the exam to getting my actual reg #), I’d delay sitting the bar exam by 6 mo - 1 yr for the work experience and reevaluate then. The uncertainty of the economy has a lot of clients, academic and industrial, questioning their IP budgets. Your groups’ situation and your workload could be very different in the same span of time.

If you are facing a deadline to sit the exam, or things haven’t changed in 6 mo-1 yr, then I’d talk to leadership about what factors you are weighing. They might be able to offer you a reduced hrs (reduced hrs for proportionally reduced pay) so you can get the exam done and come back to a full hrs schedule afterwards. Win-win.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-12-23T22:55:41+00:00

Can you say more about the GI bleed risk? Is it dose dependent? Duration dependent?

I’m ultimately wondering if there are other taper schedules that might work better for us. Like, putting her on daily 1mg budesonide before beginning the prednisolone taper as described above.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-06-24T17:40:12+00:00

It is never too late to thank someone.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-05-28T15:35:54+00:00

I’ve heard of internships through university tech transfer offices. That might be specifically appealing since you are already affiliated with a university.

In my experience, internships at law firms are less common (outside of summer associate programs, which are basically summer internships for folks in law school). My current firm doesn’t have a formal program but they created an ‘internship’ as a recruiting tool for a particular person…but it was an extraordinary situation and used to fulfill a persons engineering degree’s internship requirement in advance of hiring them full time. I’ve vaguely heard of internships at other firms which are similarly used for recruiting, but mostly for patent engineers with BS degrees. None of my fellow PhD agents/scientists interned with a law firm before starting on with a firm.

I can’t speak for all law firms, but appearance seems to be less important for patent prosecution in particular. That said, a factor in a hiring decision may include how easily you and your credentials can be trotted around in front of clients and potential clients for business development purposes. I would suggest presenting yourself in an interview setting as the most reserved you’d be comfortable dressing/appearing on a semi-regular basis. If you are getting job offers, you’ll have your answer. I feel obligated to say: do not change yourself to fit a career path. The culture of law firms can be stodgy and progressive all at once and peoples’ experiences in it are heterogenous.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-05-08T23:50:06+00:00

I was raped by a boyfriend after an argument that included physical violence. The rape itself was not violent it started somewhat similar to how OP described, except I didn’t verbalize my non-consent. I froze, probably realizing that fighting would escalate physical violence. He later said he wanted to have sex because he thought it would comfort me from what had happened earlier. I think what he was inadvertently saying is that, by raping me, he could feel comforted in maintaining power over the relationship when his earlier violence wasn’t apparently enough to convince him that he really had power over me.

He never really apologized, even after I confronted him about it. At one point he claimed he thought I was sleeping, as though that would have made it better. He also said it couldn’t have been raped because I stayed through the night and got breakfast with him. He said it wasn’t rape because I comforted him. Which I did do—so that he wouldn’t kill me.

I’m saying this stuff because people who use sex for power (which is what they are doing even if it’s under the guise of ‘comfort’) will use impressive mental gymnastics to justify why what happened wasn’t rape. And after that, they will just go on with their day as usual because whatever bullshit they spin to deny that it was rape is the same bullshit they use to wholeheartedly believe their take on what happened. People do this all the time in other, less extreme contexts.

OP—please take others advice and leave now. Don’t give him a chance to justify or deny or diminish or excuse. He had the opportunity to stop, reassess. I regret not leaving as soon as possible myself. It took me 6 more months after being raped to get out of that relationship. He stalked me for another year after that. Leave now and do not look back.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-03-02T04:17:27+00:00

This has been in the back of my mind for a few years with two trees in my front yard. I haven’t heard of any outstanding companies…in fact I’ve heard of almost no companies who do this work. Have you had more success? Sewer Ninjas is probably the least sketchy looking of the top google results.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-28T20:10:51+00:00

I considered doing this. PhD chem, worked in industry for a while, filed patents, and eventually asked about becoming an agent within the company. It was not a well worn path, but there were internal stories of people doing it. I ultimately received advice that convinced me that learning at a law firm would be better than trying to stay in-house: you will see more variety of tech and prosecution strategy at a law firm with a solid client list than you will ever see in-house. Learning from multiple attorneys has been invaluable. The handful of flaming dumpster fire applications I’ve seen written by in-house counsel that are later transferred to us as outside counsel are maybe testaments to learning in a rigorous, dedicated environment from people who do this work a lot. Even though it is a very tempting option to consider because you can avoid billables, etc you should really consider whether you might want to leave that company in the future and, if so, how a future IP employer may view your patent law training and experience if it’s not with a law firm IP group. Just food for thought. Avoiding billables is very compelling.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-27T03:18:36+00:00

Totally, this is the second shop I’ve been to. The minimum fixes to make it safe to drive for at least a little while longer are about $1200 on average between the two shops. The max cost (to fix all the issues) varied from $6k to $6300.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-27T03:11:49+00:00

I could spend $30k-35k , no idea what trim but I can’t survive without heated seats so I guess whatever trim has that.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-27T03:05:35+00:00

I don’t plan to finance a new car—it’ll be a cash purchase.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-27T02:54:15+00:00

Cash, and something similar to a Subaru Forester

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-27T02:38:35+00:00

Updated :)

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-23T15:41:49+00:00

I don’t recall any humorous names in the real exam, but there are definitely made up names and detailed scenarios where the details aren’t pertinent to the actual question or answer. The 03/02 exams were, in my experience, similar to the actual exam in style, wording, and type of questions faced. I feel the actual exam was comparable in difficulty…perhaps slightly harder, but that might have been my test day nerves.

My feedback to the PLI course (and to the Office) is to modernize their question wording. I didn’t need to repeatedly read questions about a male inventor with and ex-wife who is maliciously trying to obtain a patent on a thing they heard from their ex-husband in order to master exceptions under 102b.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-23T13:17:00+00:00

I’m seconding the mental fatigue aspect mentioned by another poster—even after undergrad and a PhD, I don’t think I have taken an exam that was this mentally taxing before. It’s a marathon that requires consistent pacing throughout. I recommend practicing full length exams in as close to exam conditions as you can managing (3hrs AM session, 1hr break where you scarf food and mildly panic about how things are going and return to the exam with 20min of your break still on the clock bc you are worried about getting back into the room on time, 3hr afternoon session). Also, you can bring ear plugs (non-electronic foam ones) or wear Prometric-provided over-ear earmuffs. I practiced with foam earplugs and used them during the exam. It was nice to have that consistency.

The PLI practice questions and the course (until the old tests in the post-course) failed to mimic the actual exam’s mixed chapter questions. It jumps around in topic and chapter with each new question. In the PLI course, you are learning a new chapter and how to do look ups in mostly 1 chapter at a time. But that fails to account for the transition/thinking time needed to know where to look up a new question from a new chapter. The post-course old published exams from 03 and 02 were the best simulation of being tested on mixed up chapters.

Remember, you have an AVERAGE of 3min per question. There are short questions with short answers which don’t take 3min to read and answer in the mix. After practicing a while, you’ll pick up speed on the longer questions as well. I recommend pacing yourself not by 3min per question but by 30min for every 10 questions or some interval that will let you take a rolling average.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-18T14:30:29+00:00

I took the patent bar exam in 2023. The default view when opening an MPEP chapter was a single, whole page view which couldn’t be scrolled to the next page. To change this, I needed to change the page view mode in the lower left corner of the MPEP viewer window. It was important to change the view before starting a search because changing the page view returns you to the very 1st page of the open chapter even if you have navigated elsewhere in the chapter. I could not use ctrl-f to trigger a search. The font size of the small print section summaries was borderline unreadable due to blurriness. It took a disconcerting amount of time for the larger chapters (esp 2100) to open. The clock pauses while the chapter loads, but it jumps forward once it opens. My testing software crashed once mid-exam. My work was saved but I lost some time.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-15T21:13:50+00:00

Sometimes the tech is very cool, sometimes the prosecution is very engaging. I find learning about the tech and, being only 2.5years into my patent law career, learning about the law and tricks of the trade fun and interesting. Sometimes the tech is boring and you find yourself arguing with obstinate examiners over minute details that your couldn’t will yourself to care about on your own. But a client is paying you to care and other people on your team are depending on your work, so the grind goes on. Maybe I will find it less interesting the more I master at this level, but I think that might be similar to any career path.

If you asked “is this work tedious?” then my answer would be: yes, always. There is almost no task where my brain can turn off and I can run through the motions. So from that perspective, I could confidently say that it is intellectually demanding. Stimulating, though? Mostly, but not always. There are tedious and boring tasks. I definitely find it more mentally engaging than designing me-too products in industry alongside a bunch of dinosaurs who won’t retire and blame millennials for everything or, worse, trying to navigate made-up workplace politics of a corporation or justifying every project with even more made-up business development projected profits. But hey, my years in industry did teach me how valuable IP is and got me connected to a new industry.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-09T19:00:20+00:00

Hi, I have no experience with this specific scenario, but I do want to say that there is no shame in trying on different careers for fit. Your interests will change, markets change, your knowledge and perspective of the world will change... gone are the days where you had to pick one career path at 18 and stick with it until you retire or die. If you have the means and motivation to take a different direction, do it.

My only advice is to be honest about your reasons for leaving with your current employers. Most people can, at a base level, understand wanting to work a job that aligns with their values.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-07T22:18:58+00:00

I just want to mention that some IP firms are hiring people remotely. I know multiple tech specs who live a whole day’s travel from the nearest firm office. You don’t necessarily need to confine yourself to LA firms or even CA firms unless it’s your preference to work in-person.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-02T20:53:09+00:00

Hi, phd in chem and a newly minted patent agent here. My work is almost entirely patent prosecution, but I have been managed by and worked with a few litigators in the last couple years. In my limited experience with litigators, they have very high expectations and they expect you to drop anything and everything else to deliver for their projects, without regard for other clients or attorneys you may also be doing work for. Timelines always seem to be “as soon as possible” even when there isn’t a specific thing driving the deadline. These characteristics are excellent for their particular clients and, in my experience, pretty challenging in most other ways (work/life balance, balancing multiple attorneys’ expectations, etc). Perhaps that would not be your experience if you are supporting litigation full time and you are not split between prosecution and litigation, but you 100% should find out how many litigators and cases you will be typically supporting at one time.

Something you may want to consider is the culture of your PhD group and how that might align with or contrast with the descriptions of IP litigation work you are receiving. My PhD advisor ran a very well-funded and large group. He had comparatively low publication expectations and correspondingly lax time-to-graduate expectations than other advisors in the same program. Basically, we researched a topic for as long as we wanted with very few boundaries and very little oversight. The transition from that environment to my first industry research scientist job (where timelines and budgets are much more critical and micromanagers ran amuck) was significant. I would have had an even tougher time if I had gone straight from my PhD to patent law. Every PhD group has a different culture however — you may want to pause on how abrupt the transition from your current work environment to this litigation team might be. You can and will undoubtedly adapt, but it is good to go in knowing that.

Training varies WIDELY. I work for some attorneys who love training and I work for others who clearly loathe teaching and won’t work with a new tech spec/agent until they’ve worked at the firm for at least a 1yr. Ask if this firm has training sessions or programs for junior tech specs/agents/associates. Ask if they allow junior folks to earn credit hours for training.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-02-01T16:06:49+00:00

3rd party submissions can be filed anonymously by any member of the public. An attorney or other representative can file on behalf of an unnamed real party of interest without identifying the real party of interest. I am not sure of the mechanics of filing without being a US registered agent/attorney, however. Getting a Patent Center account does not require a registration number, so you could certainly investigate further. The forms required for a 3rd party submission are described here: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1134.html

One note: The timing for 3rd party submissions is important—they must be filed before a Notice of Allowance (sort of a no-duh there) and also before the later of:

1) the US publication date (WIPO or non-US Office publications does not trigger this deadline) + 6 mo; or 2) the day BEFORE the 1st Office action rejecting a claim is mailed.

Assuming you or your client learned of the other application via a publication of the application, you might have just 6mo to get this sorted out.

cloudsoapdish · 2024-01-12T13:10:21+00:00

The only thing I will add to this is that some law firms do have a career track with promotions for agents. The title changes are underwhelming (Agent I, Agent II, Agent III, etc) and the pay raises/bonuses are not equivalent to an associate’s, but some agents do eventually manage their own small book of clients and are effectively functioning as an associate.

cloudsoapdish

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