<p>Don’t know if anyone is still watching this thread but i’m going to post anyway and hope someone is. Anyway i’m currently a sophomore majoring in chemistry. I sort of enjoy it, love the research i’m doing though, but have just now realized what an awful major it is in terms of work put in to get it and the payoff. So i thought about switching to chemical engineering, delaying my graduation by a year, then trying for law school for patent law. Would it be better though to do a dual degree program and get a masters in chemistry along with a law degree, or is the market really saturated with phd’s in chemistry and related fields? If this is so would it be more advisable to spend the extra time getting a chemical engineering degree and then a masters in it, thats a whopping extra two to three years though plus law school and quite frankly i don’t want to spend six years after college in school making either crap money or being in debt. From everything i’ve read though it seems i should give up on patent law as it is a market saturated with over qualified people and i do not want to spend all of my 20’s in school</p>
<p>As I have said in an earlier post, no-one can predict the future who hasn’t been there.</p>
<p>I appreciate your predicament but no-one is in a great position to give you concrete advice. However, I think you are trying to bite off too much at one time. Right now you are exactly in the proper situation to consider sticking with your chemistry major, switching to chem engineering or switching to something else entirely.</p>
<p>At this time, hiring for chemists is down, due to a combination of cuts in R&D at large companies, outsourcing of some research overseas and the buildup of new local research in India, China and elsewhere. Don’t know the numbers for Chem Es, though there are some opportunities due to expansion of a few biotech companies into manufacturing.</p>
<p>You really should not be thinking about law school right now if you’re not sure about the amount of work you want to put into getting top grades in a tough science major (I don’t think the work is any easier in chem E than in chemistry). You should be thinking about your currrent major. Also, if the work doesn’t seem to pay off for you in chemistry, getting into a master’s progam is not at all assured.</p>
<p>In addition, law school is totally different from science majors and is also totally different from most every cilleg course you will take. Before you think seriously about law school you should try to find out what the material is like, to see if you will like it and do well in it. Right now, the job market for new law school graduates is tight.</p>
<p>That’s the best I can do at this time. Talk with your advisors, your parents, and anyone else who may have some good ideas (primarily adults, because many of your fellow students will have the gaps of solid knowledge as you).</p>
<p>dadofsam,</p>
<p>Thank you for all this information. I have a few questions if you have the time:</p>
<p>1) How does a Masters in Applied Physics compare to MSEE or other engineering degrees in the current prosecution job market?</p>
<p>2) How likely do you think it is that software patents and business method patents will be stopped by the Supreme Court? Assuming the Supreme Court were to stop those types of patents, which patent prosecutors would be most affected?</p>
<p>3) How likely do you think very disruptive congressional patent reform is in the next ten to twenty years? By disruptive I mean disruptive to the business of patent prosecutors. I understand you cannot predict the future but I would be interested in your thoughts nevertheless. On tech blogs and forums, which I recognize have little or no impact on our government, one gets the impression that people believe the patent system is broken and silly (e.g, Amazon’s One-Click Patent) or even harmful altogether (e.g., pharmaceutical companies keeping drug costs high due to patent protections). One also hears people complain about “patent ■■■■■■.” Is all this just noise from the internet? Or do you ever see signs from industry and/or regulators that significant reform is needed? My concern is of course whether the market for prosecutors could be adversely affected by such reform, if implemented.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>CarbonBLF:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In my opinion a Master’s degree in Applied Physics is about as useful for prosecution as an MSEE. Of course, it also depends on the needs of the people who are hiring for a speecific position.</p></li>
<li><p>The Supreme Court has already declined in the Bilski case this past year to rule out business method and software patents entirely. Exactly what is permitted is the topic of numerous articles and seminars.</p></li>
<li><p>There usually is a possibility of major Congressional action on patents. However, for the past few years it hs been bogged down due to a strong difference of opinion between the software industry on the one hand and the pharmaceutical/biotech industry on the other, as to whether certain proposed changes are beneficial or create more difficulties. Members of Congress who represent concentrations of both industries in their districts are having difficulty getting their constituents to agree on what they should support in a patent bill.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>However, I don’t think that any of that will have a negative effect on the need for patent prosecutors.</p>
<p>Hi Dadosfam, Thanks for all of the great information. I have an BS in chemistry, an MS in molecular pharmacology and experimental therapeutics and 7 years of experience in a toxicology lab as a technical specialist. I’ve just been accepted to a law school and I am intersted in pursuing a career in IP law. After reading all of your comments however, I am little worried that my grades (2.9 undergrad and 3.2 graduate) and LSAT score (157) would put me at a disadvantage to other first time job applicants. If you were in my position would you think twice about going down this road? Thanks for your thoughts.</p>
<p>Let’s see if we can identfy the real question here.</p>
<p>If the question is whether you will be able to be admitted to a law school with those stats -sorry but I have no information on law school admissions.</p>
<p>If the question is whether those stats will only be sufficient to admit you to a lower tier law school, and whether graduating from such a school will make it difficult or impossible fo you to compete for an entry-level IP job, the answer is (surprise): it depends.</p>
<p>In a tight economy, as we have now, a lot of employers are looking for IP attorneys with experience, and they can get them. Even under good circumstances, most corporate employers do not wish to train IP attorneys, so entry-level jobs tend to be (with a few exceptions) in law firms or via working as an examiner in the USPTO. For a lwa form job, the law school you attend and the grades you receive will be paramount. However, many firms are happy with graduates of good local or regional law schools, providing they have good law school grades. Good graduate school grades help, and a 3.2 might be good enough - but not as much in a tight economy, which we have now, where attorneys have been laid off.</p>
<p>So if you decide to go to a law school, go to the best one you can into that you can afford, and get the best grades that you possibly can. </p>
<p>And what will things be like in 3 or 4 or 5 years, when you graduate law school? Your guess is as good as mine.</p>
<p>Hello dadofsam,</p>
<p>While I realize this thread focuses mostly on patent law, I was wondering if you could expand at all on copyright law? As in if there are any additional requirements, or schools where this is a focus. While intellectual property is if interest to me, I am more interested in the artistic areas.</p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>I believe that UCLA has an expanded copyright law program; probably also other law schools in the LA area as well as some in New York city. These are where major entertainment centers are located.</p>
<p>New York Law School, (not NYU) in Manhattan, has long had a copyright concentration.</p>
<p>Dadofsam,</p>
<p>It seems to be generally accepted that law school ranking and law school GPA are paramount for determining employment prospects for most new lawyers. Is this just as true for potential patent prosecutors with electrical engineering degrees? </p>
<p>And how important is the pedigree of a science / engineering degree for lawyers who want to be patent prosecutors? Obviously going to MIT is better than going to an average state school but does it carry the same importance as law school pedigree?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>As I have said elsewhere on this thread, most entry-level patent attorney positions are with law firms. Most corporations do not want to have to go through the training process. For the larger law firms, the law school you attended and the GPA you earned, as well as other law school-based qualifications such as law review membership or participation in moot court competition, are most important. However, as I also have said, one need not have attended a top-tier school to compete for a first-year associate position in a larger law firm. Please check this thread for more detailed comments on this point by me and by others.</p>
<p>A smaller law firm may not be as demanding regarding these qualifications as a larger one. Of course, the pay won’t be as great either, but it normally will be quite adequate.</p>
<p>Technical education still counts a fair deal at this stage. However, most applicants for entry-level positions did not go to MIT or a similar stratospheric school, and for engineers the quality of education does not vary a great deal among the different schools. So if you have reasonably good engineereing grades you ought to be pretty competitive in that regard.</p>
<p>Later on, your professional quality as a patent attorney will be more important than any of these factors.</p>
<p>I am most likely going to study Materials Science & Engineering in college and am very interested in eventually pursuing a career in patent law. However, this website <a href=“http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/grb.pdf[/url]”>http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/grb.pdf</a> (hopefully the link works) does not list Matsci as one of the possible degrees that qualify you to take the patent bar. It does list multiple fields that are subsets of Matsci (Metallurgical Engineering, Ceramic Engineering, etc). So would a degree in Matsci qualify me to take the bar or not?</p>
<p>Also, because I’m not completely set on Matsci, I’m wondering if there are certain fields of engineering that, in your opinion, are more advantageous for a future patent attorney to major in. If hypothetically biotech lawsuits are where the big money is at, should I major in bioengineering? Or am I wrong in assuming that patent attorneys specialize like that?</p>
<p>I have not read through this entire thread so if you have already answered any of these questions I apologize.</p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>He’s just going to tell you that you can’t predict which fields will be most desirable in the next ten years. (Although I wonder what backgrounds are most often chosen for business method patents.) </p>
<p>Look at the patent bar requirements carefully and you will see that you can satisfy it with your coursework. So even if the degree is not automatic, if you’ve taken 24 units in physics or 40 units in combined science / engineering classes you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>^Thanks for the response. Ok, so if you can’t predict the desirable fields 10 years from now, what are the most desirable fields now? What are the least desirable fields now?</p>
<p>Also, regarding Matsci, I’d probably be focusing in nanotechnology. To me, nanotech seems to be a developing field that would bring a lot of important patents in the future. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>Superman:</p>
<p>First of all, read my post # 53 on page 4. You are thinking too far ahead; in the end you may not choose patent law at all. First choose a major that interests you AND that you can do well in. Otherwise you might not get into law school, if that is still your objective when you finish college.</p>
<p>Second, patent attorneys may work in litigation or in patent drafting/prosecution/strategy but not usually both.</p>
<p>Third, you are looking for a prediction for at least 7 years from now, when you will have ffinished both college and law school, and that is impossible (at least for me). At one time there was a belief that jobs for mechanical patent attorneys would dry up because many fewer patents were being filed for machinery. That was before the major boom in patents for medical and prosthetic devices, which often require a knowledcge of patenting mechanical devices.</p>
<p>And in my opinion thinking about business method patents is a waste of time.</p>
<p>Why is thinking about business method patents a waste of time? Aren’t a lot of them filed?</p>
<p>They tend to have broad scope, which has made them very controversial, and Congress is considering legislation that would place strong limitations on this type of patent</p>
<p>What are the prospects for Bioengineering, Biomechanical Engineering, and Biomedical Computation? </p>
<p>Especially Biomechanical and Biomedical Comp., which are two majors that I haven’t previously considered or even known about.</p>
<p>The biomedical and bioengineering areas are a growing. Medical device manufacturers and law firms that represent them are examples of employers. </p>
<p>I am doing a search now for a Chief Patent Officer for a corporation in the electrical, computer, physics areas and am finding more practitioners in the “bio-” than ever. Another tidbit - I usually find that the credentials are not as key for patent jobs, but this particular client is insisting on top law school and top undergrad.</p>
<p>Would you say that a bioengineering-type degree (again, not necessarily bioengineering, but maybe biomechanical engineering and biomedical computation - all 3 of which are handed out as B.S.'s through the school of engineering) be more useful than a regular biology B.S.?</p>
<p>The difference in unit load and types/rigor of courses is pretty dramatic between biology and bioengineering.</p>