| My thoughts... in random order...
$200,000/year starting? No one told me that! It is high, but I don't think it's that high. A large firm will pay you about $125-$150k/year, but I've never heard of $200k starting - maybe if you have a Ph.D. or something, but I've never heard of that. It's still a ton of money though, and, unlike engineering, it goes up a lot from there.
Patent attorneys, from what I understand, do either patent prosecution or patent litigation. Patent prosecution is not harassing people with patents; it basically is writing patents and applying for them from the US PTO. Patent litigation is suing someone who infringed on your client's patent, or defending a client from the suit. Infringement = using the same or similar technology without a license to do so.
You may need to pass the patent bar to be a patent attorney; this is an exam issued by the PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) and has fairly strict requirements about who can sit for it. You need to be an engineer or a scientist, and some types of engineering (architectural, biomedical for starters) and science majors are excluded. You can do a google search for the list - but chemE definitely qualifies. The good thing is that, as so few people can sit for it, patent attorneys are in high demand. |