Calling all IP students and associates... Forum

[IP_wannabe]

I'm currently a rising junior in undergrad, with hopes of going to law school. Chemical engineering major, with a strong interest in IP and patent law.

So my question for you is... Would you still go to law school if you could do it all over again? Why or why not?

Any additional information that you're willing to share would be great, especially about the following topics:
- Current job and size of firm
- Current location
- Job (or job prospects) before law school
- starting salary upon graduation
- Current salary
- Law school attending/attended
- hours of work per week

Basically... Do you regret passing up engineering and going to law school? Or do you truly enjoy your job and life as an IP attorney?

Thanks everyone

[oblitigate]

I'm currently a rising junior in undergrad, with hopes of going to law school. Chemical engineering major, with a strong interest in IP and patent law.

So my question for you is... Would you still go to law school if you could do it all over again? Why or why not?

Any additional information that you're willing to share would be great, especially about the following topics:
- Current job and size of firm
- Current location
- Job (or job prospects) before law school
- starting salary upon graduation
- Current salary
- Law school attending/attended
- hours of work per week

Basically... Do you regret passing up engineering and going to law school? Or do you truly enjoy your job and life as an IP attorney?

Thanks everyone

Your ChemE so you mean patent law right? Patent law as a practice group might fall on hard times over the next few years, primarily due to some unsettling recent Supreme Court decisions and pending bills in the Legislature. I'm being awfully sincere when I say the best thing you can do is go work in engineering for a few years and watch how things play out. If you still want to go to law school after that, get in to Berkeley and do yo thang. You'll be a wayyy hotter commodity after having a few years experience anyways, and you won't be hedging the rest of your life on a practice with a wildly uncertain future. Anecdote: I'm in a highly respected "unicorn" patent lit firm btw; PM me if you need any clarification

[BruceWayne]

I'm currently a rising junior in undergrad, with hopes of going to law school. Chemical engineering major, with a strong interest in IP and patent law.

So my question for you is... Would you still go to law school if you could do it all over again? Why or why not?

Any additional information that you're willing to share would be great, especially about the following topics:
- Current job and size of firm
- Current location
- Job (or job prospects) before law school
- starting salary upon graduation
- Current salary
- Law school attending/attended
- hours of work per week

Basically... Do you regret passing up engineering and going to law school? Or do you truly enjoy your job and life as an IP attorney?

Thanks everyone

Your ChemE so you mean patent law right? Patent law as a practice group might fall on hard times over the next few years, primarily due to some unsettling recent Supreme Court decisions and pending bills in the Legislature. I'm being awfully sincere when I say the best thing you can do is go work in engineering for a few years and watch how things play out. If you still want to go to law school after that, get in to Berkeley and do yo thang. You'll be a wayyy hotter commodity after having a few years experience anyways, and you won't be hedging the rest of your life on a practice with a wildly uncertain future. Anecdote: I'm in a highly respected "unicorn" patent lit firm btw; PM me if you need any clarification

Not asking you to do case summaries or anything but could you give a quick explanation?

[oblitigate]

I'm currently a rising junior in undergrad, with hopes of going to law school. Chemical engineering major, with a strong interest in IP and patent law.

So my question for you is... Would you still go to law school if you could do it all over again? Why or why not?

Any additional information that you're willing to share would be great, especially about the following topics:
- Current job and size of firm
- Current location
- Job (or job prospects) before law school
- starting salary upon graduation
- Current salary
- Law school attending/attended
- hours of work per week

Basically... Do you regret passing up engineering and going to law school? Or do you truly enjoy your job and life as an IP attorney?

Thanks everyone

Your ChemE so you mean patent law right? Patent law as a practice group might fall on hard times over the next few years, primarily due to some unsettling recent Supreme Court decisions and pending bills in the Legislature. I'm being awfully sincere when I say the best thing you can do is go work in engineering for a few years and watch how things play out. If you still want to go to law school after that, get in to Berkeley and do yo thang. You'll be a wayyy hotter commodity after having a few years experience anyways, and you won't be hedging the rest of your life on a practice with a wildly uncertain future. Anecdote: I'm in a highly respected "unicorn" patent lit firm btw; PM me if you need any clarification

Not asking you to do case summaries or anything but could you give a quick explanation?

Well shit, where do I begin? First off, they did a bunch of annoying shit for plaintiff-patentees (e.g., repositioned the burden of proof back on the patentee in dec actions (i.e., a licensee files a complaint declaring noninfringement) and they lowered the "exceptional case" (for atty's fees) bar from objectively baseless, brought in subjectively bad faith to some "one that stands out from the rest" standard). But most importantly, the holdings of two cases--CLS Bank v. Alice & Akamai v. Limelight--were a travesty. Alice is super fucked and hard to totally explain but it has made the line for patentable subject matter very unclear, and has (and will continue to) invalidated a lot of (primarily) software patents. And Akamai was even stupider; it reverse an en banc Fed. Circuit and eliminated divided/joint infringement as a cause of action (i.e., IP Wannabe infringes 5 of 6 elements on my patent and knowingly induces Bruce Wayne to infringe the last element--IP Wannabe is now probably protected from liability). This "gaming" happens a lot with telecom and pharmaceutical patents, but it is out of control in every industry.

And Congress has several bills pending, the most notable and damning being the Innovation Act, which primarily has a fee switching mechanism and limits pre-Markman (claim construction) discovery to information related to claim construction

Shit may hit the fan, who knows. Thank god law school was only $200k

[alphasteve]

Akamai was a smart decision. The Fed Cir en band was terrible - how they thought you could have divided w/o underlying direct is beyond me.

Functionally, though, all of these cases and most of the legislation won't change the practice, just where the argument is.

Maybe it will stop the dumbest of troll firms.

/associate

[oblitigate]

Akamai was a smart decision. The Fed Cir en band was terrible - how they thought you could have divided w/o underlying direct is beyond me.

Functionally, though, all of these cases and most of the legislation won't change the practice, just where the argument is.

Maybe it will stop the dumbest of troll firms.

/associate

Let's not derail OP's thread.

But w that said: there was underlying direct infringement under the Fed Cir's Akamai holding; direct could just be divided amongst two parties. Hence, is why scotus flagrantly based all it's determinations on the Fed Cir's Muniauction decision & left the Muniauction issue up to the fed cir to rehear/re-decide. Despite that, if you just read transcripts of the Akamai oral arguments before scotus, it's pretty clear that even scotus thought that setting a black line rule that direct infringement must be performed exclusively by one infringer, leaving the door open to intentional/willful infringement & way more game-playing than Brazil did against Germany, is #megaretard

[alphasteve]

Akamai was a smart decision. The Fed Cir en band was terrible - how they thought you could have divided w/o underlying direct is beyond me.

Functionally, though, all of these cases and most of the legislation won't change the practice, just where the argument is.

Maybe it will stop the dumbest of troll firms.

/associate

Let's not derail OP's thread.

But w that said: there was underlying direct infringement under the Fed Cir's Akamai holding; direct could just be divided amongst two parties. Hence, is why scotus flagrantly based all it's determinations on the Fed Cir's Muniauction decision & left the Muniauction issue up to the fed cir to rehear/re-decide. Despite that, if you just read transcripts of the Akamai oral arguments before scotus, it's pretty clear that even scotus thought that setting a black line rule that direct infringement must be performed exclusively by one infringer, leaving the door open to intentional/willful infringement & way more game-playing than Brazil did against Germany, is #megaretard

Hate to parrot back the Supreme Court, but if you want direct infringement with divided, has to come through congress. Statutes been clear for some time that must be direct with single person.

[Kafkaesquire]

What's an "IP student"?

[handsonthewheel]

I'm currently a rising junior in undergrad, with hopes of going to law school. Chemical engineering major, with a strong interest in IP and patent law.

So my question for you is... Would you still go to law school if you could do it all over again? Why or why not?

Any additional information that you're willing to share would be great, especially about the following topics:
- Current job and size of firm
- Current location
- Job (or job prospects) before law school
- starting salary upon graduation
- Current salary
- Law school attending/attended
- hours of work per week

Basically... Do you regret passing up engineering and going to law school? Or do you truly enjoy your job and life as an IP attorney?

Thanks everyone

Your ChemE so you mean patent law right? Patent law as a practice group might fall on hard times over the next few years, primarily due to some unsettling recent Supreme Court decisions and pending bills in the Legislature. I'm being awfully sincere when I say the best thing you can do is go work in engineering for a few years and watch how things play out. If you still want to go to law school after that, get in to Berkeley and do yo thang. You'll be a wayyy hotter commodity after having a few years experience anyways, and you won't be hedging the rest of your life on a practice with a wildly uncertain future. Anecdote: I'm in a highly respected "unicorn" patent lit firm btw; PM me if you need any clarification

Not asking you to do case summaries or anything but could you give a quick explanation?

Well shit, where do I begin? First off, they did a bunch of annoying shit for plaintiff-patentees (e.g., repositioned the burden of proof back on the patentee in dec actions (i.e., a licensee files a complaint declaring noninfringement) and they lowered the "exceptional case" (for atty's fees) bar from objectively baseless, brought in subjectively bad faith to some "one that stands out from the rest" standard). But most importantly, the holdings of two cases--CLS Bank v. Alice & Akamai v. Limelight--were a travesty. Alice is super fucked and hard to totally explain but it has made the line for patentable subject matter very unclear, and has (and will continue to) invalidated a lot of (primarily) software patents. And Akamai was even stupider; it reverse an en banc Fed. Circuit and eliminated divided/joint infringement as a cause of action (i.e., IP Wannabe infringes 5 of 6 elements on my patent and knowingly induces Bruce Wayne to infringe the last element--IP Wannabe is now probably protected from liability). This "gaming" happens a lot with telecom and pharmaceutical patents, but it is out of control in every industry.

And Congress has several bills pending, the most notable and damning being the Innovation Act, which primarily has a fee switching mechanism and limits pre-Markman (claim construction) discovery to information related to claim construction

Shit may hit the fan, who knows. Thank god law school was only $200k

Don't listen to this. My guess is that this is a rising 3L who took patent law last year without any real perspective as to the economics, business side, or even legal practice side.

[speedtracer]

I'd always heard that patent law was a rising field too

Now I'm rethinking possibly transferring to Stanford from UF in order to pursue it

[totesTheGoat]

I'm a current part-time law student at a T50 school, and I work full-time for a firm doing patent work. Here's what I'd say. Get experience in engineering before you go to law school. It doesn't have to be a ton (I have 4.5 years of software engineering on my resume, including 18 months internship), but your engineering degree is much more valuable with some experience. If you're scholastically talented, and are willing to locate to a city where IP is hot, there are opportunities for you.

For me, there's no question that I made the right decision. I knew, through internships and working for 3 years as an engineer, that I wasn't satisfied being an engineer for the next 30+ years. I had always left the door open for law school, and I pulled the trigger once I was in a good financial position for it. Do I miss engineering sometimes? Yes! However, at least for a computer engineer like me, I can satiate my creativity through hobby. I'm not so sure that's as feasible for a ChemE.

The job I'm currently doing is supposed to emulate the work that a young associate would be doing, just throttled back for lack of experience and the fact that I go to school in the evenings. I think the most awesome part of this job, so far, is that I spend all day familiarizing myself with other people's inventions! Sure, there are parts that are formulaic and repetitive, but I spend my working days trying to compare inventions and argue differences between them. For how boring everybody says IP law is, I've found it really engaging.

Despite the overreactions in this thread, patent law isn't going to die because of Alice or Nautilus or Akamai or the AIA. Good firms are still salivating over the prospect of chemE, compE, and biomedE law students. I didn't even technically qualify for the position that I currently have, but they hired me anyway.

Generally, here's what I would say. If you are a deep-dive kind of person, who enjoys knowing the ins and outs of a system in excruciating detail, skip patent law. If you like to be exposed to a bunch of different technologies which require expertise, but not "give a presentation at a conference" level expertise, pursue patent law.

[pfunkera]

I work in an IP department for a Fortune 500 company (pharmaceuticals) - all of the patent attorneys have PHDs/Masters. I think all but one of them was hired with experience. I am entering law school in a few weeks to become a patent attorney so hopefully the job market stays stable in my field. I joined the company about 5 years ago and there are 9 new IP attorneys hired in that time and we do not have a big department.

[SDviaVA]

I work in an IP department for a Fortune 500 company (pharmaceuticals) - all of the patent attorneys have PHDs/Masters. I think all but one of them was hired with experience. I am entering law school in a few weeks to become a patent attorney so hopefully the job market stays stable in my field. I joined the company about 5 years ago and there are 9 new IP attorneys hired in that time and we do not have a big department.

E

Most of the Patent Attorneys at you pharma company are probably strait chem/bio majors. Those with an engineering degree typically do not need an M.S./Ph.d to do patent work.