Patent prosecution job with foreign BSEE degree Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi all,

I go to law school in DC this year, and want to do patent prosecution.

I got BSEE from foreign university with honors but my school is not prestige in the US(around 51-100 ranked school in QS and usnews engineering part).

Is it enough with my BSEE? Or should I get MS or M.eng to get job as a patent attorney?

[Abbie Doobie]

most firms wont care where you did undergrad as long as your undergrad degree qualifies you to sit for the patent office registration exam. so you should check to make sure that you can even sit for the exam if you haven't already. that way you can give a definitive answer if the question comes up in interviews, which it probably will.

[Anonymous User]

Heavily depends on the firm; some don't care where you get your degree, some care a lot. Good law school grades will generally cancel any desire for an MIT engineering degree, provided you know your stuff and demonstrate you're capable of learning about a lot of different technologies.

If you want to get into patent pros, having the Master's will help. At some firms it's an unspoken rule that they require a Master's at a minimum, if not a PhD. I know one patent agent at my firm with just a Bachelor's, but he was part of a transfer from another firm. Don't know if he would have been hired by my firm outright if he hadn't been; I know the partners told him they got some flak trying to bring him over because he just has a Bachelor's (the rest are Masters/PhD). If you do lit, they only care about the Bachelor's.

[redtalun]

Does any of this really need to be anon?

OP: strikingly similar question posted here - http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 6#p9308016 and on intelproplaw.

Above anon: your insight seems to be more directed towards life sciences where MS/PhD is almost a prerequisite. BS in EE/CS arts is generally sufficient.

[Anonymous User]

Does any of this really need to be anon?

OP: strikingly similar question posted here - http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 6#p9308016 and on intelproplaw.

Above anon: your insight seems to be more directed towards life sciences where MS/PhD is almost a prerequisite. BS in EE/CS arts is generally sufficient.

Actually I am talking about EE/ME/CS as well. The person about whom I was speaking was a CS major (and yes, I recognize that it makes no sense for a firm to wrinkle their nose at a B.S. CS/SE degree for patent pros.; unfortunately I don't make the rules here).

I stress again that it depends on the firm/group. Some up-and-coming V30+ with strong patent pros groups are starting to get picky about the credentials of the applicants they hire, but some are still focused on the technical abilities of the applicants more than the exact degree. You can try going online to visit the firm's page that you're applying to, and see if people in the IP dept. got hired with B.S. degrees. That'll hopefully give you an indication of how common/rare it is for people like you to get hired. At my firm, you're only going to see the one person; at others, you may see a bunch more.

[Emu Flu]

Does any of this really need to be anon?

OP: strikingly similar question posted here - http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 6#p9308016 and on intelproplaw.

Above anon: your insight seems to be more directed towards life sciences where MS/PhD is almost a prerequisite. BS in EE/CS arts is generally sufficient.

Actually I am talking about EE/ME/CS as well. The person about whom I was speaking was a CS major (and yes, I recognize that it makes no sense for a firm to wrinkle their nose at a B.S. CS/SE degree for patent pros.; unfortunately I don't make the rules here).

I stress again that it depends on the firm/group. Some up-and-coming V30+ with strong patent pros groups are starting to get picky about the credentials of the applicants they hire, but some are still focused on the technical abilities of the applicants more than the exact degree. You can try going online to visit the firm's page that you're applying to, and see if people in the IP dept. got hired with B.S. degrees. That'll hopefully give you an indication of how common/rare it is for people like you to get hired. At my firm, you're only going to see the one person; at others, you may see a bunch more.

By V30+ do you mean those Vault rankings? I'm a patent prosecutor and nobody in the industry knows that stuff. I looked at the list and most of those firms don't even do much (if any) EE/CS prosecution. You can look at something like the IP Today top patent firms rankings, which lists firms in terms of volume of allowances. Not 100% accurate because some companies do their own docketing and allowances are prosecution-based, but it can give you an idea.

Also, so few people are entering this field nowadays, especially with EE or CS backgrounds. The industry has gone from focusing on (in progression) Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, anything else patent bar eligible. I can't see a firm even trying to only focus on people with MS degrees. That's impossible now.

[h2go]

M.S. is definitely not necessary for EE/ME/CS. Sure, it would be better, but you can definitely get a job at a top firm without one with decent grades from a decent school.

Volume of allowances is not necessarily the best metric. A lot of the firms do a bunch of low-cost foreign inbound work from Samsung, Fujitsu, Sony, etc. Fish and Finnegan are probably still top in terms of quality.

[Anonymous User]

Best in quality would be a good solo practitioner. Same budget, lower billing rate.

Foreign in-bound work isn't that low-cost and it's extremely lucrative. I'd be happy to do that stuff! A lot of those NoVa/DC in-bound focused firms have good salaries and easy hours. I wish we did that stuff on the West Coast. I just went through Finnegan's filings and I see that they're doing a lot of in-bound JP work. Their EE/CS prosecution work seems like it's nothing out of the ordinary.

[Anonymous User]

Firms like Sughrue and Oblon are always up there near the top in terms of volume but I've heard some of those extreme volume firms are pretty terrible places to work at...even worse than a typical biglaw firm, insane policies to force production. Policies along the lines of insurance defense firms and other mills

As for the op, BS is fine though foreign could hurt you if it not a well known international Univ. For CS/EE space ppl tho, experience in the industry is wayyyyyyyyy more desirable than fancy degrees

[Anonymous User]

Best in quality would be a good solo practitioner. Same budget, lower billing rate.

Foreign in-bound work isn't that low-cost and it's extremely lucrative. I'd be happy to do that stuff! A lot of those NoVa/DC in-bound focused firms have good salaries and easy hours. I wish we did that stuff on the West Coast. I just went through Finnegan's filings and I see that they're doing a lot of in-bound JP work. Their EE/CS prosecution work seems like it's nothing out of the ordinary.

For quality, I meant in terms of places OP could actually work at and receive good training. There definitely are other boutiques and GP firms that are doing quality work besides Fish and Finnegan. I agree that foreign in-bound work is extremely lucrative, but you're not going to learn anything if that's all you do. You don't draft any applications and most of the time your just follow whatever instructions you receive from the client/foreign associate.