Patent Law Career

Patent Career Center » Patent Agent/Attorney Career

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What is a Career as a Patent Agent/Attorney Like?

If you decide to become a Patent Practitioner, whether a Patent Agent or a Patent Attorney, you will help inventors gain patents on their inventions. Inventors may be in the form of corporations, small businesses, scientists or even the lone inventor working from his or her garage.

Regardless of who they are, you will advise inventors as to whether or not their invention is patentable by performing a patent search (or hiring someone to do it). If it is, you will draft a patent application for them.

A patent application primarily consists of information about the invention. What is it? How does it work?

There are also drawings and claims. To give you a very general description of the claims, they define exactly what the inventor "claims" he or she has invented.

As a patent agent or attorney, you must rely on your technical expertise to draft the patent application. That means you will need to understand the invention and communicate it to others in the patent application.

Once it is completed, the application must be sent to the USPTO, where it is examined by a patent examiner. Examiners determine whether or not the invention described in the application will become a patent.

Once the examination process has begun, you will correspond with the examiner and the inventor and make adjustments to the application to the best of your abilities. Eventually, the examiner will either allow the application to patent, or reject it.

So to briefly summarize, a career as a patent agent or attorney will involve a great deal of writing and correspondence between an inventor and the Patent and Trademark Office.

Learn how to pass the computerized Patent Bar Exam using the PES-System Patent Bar Review Course.