Patent Bar Exam News » What Does the Patent Bar Exam Cover?
What Does the Patent Bar Exam Cover?
The Patent Bar Exam tests your knowledge of the Manual of Examining Procedure (MPEP). The MPEP is a few thousand pages long and it references many rules and laws established by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).
There are two sources for the laws and rules covered in the MPEP. The first is the set of laws described in "United States Code Title 35 - Patents". Most manuals refer to this group of laws as 35 U.S.C.
The second source includes the rules described in the "Code of Federal Regulations - Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights". These are abbreviated as 37 C.F.R. As far as the patent bar exam is concerned, you only need to know the Regulations covered in the Patents section of 37 C.F.R.
The MPEP includes all the relevant laws and rules that you need to know to pass the Patent Bar exam. Within it, every angle of each law and rule is covered, in addition to forms useful to patent agents and attorneys and citations to important court cases.
As the laws and rules and even the interpretations of the MPEP change, newer editions of the MPEP are published. You may expect a new edition to pop up about every 1.5 to 2 years. The PTO has recently released the 8th edition, Rev 4 MPEP. They expect to begin testing over this new revision on October 19th, 2006 (prior to that date, the exam will cover the 8th edition, Rev 2 MPEP). Make sure your MPEP or study aids are based on the correct edition or check out our MPEP updates.
In addition, the Patent Office frequently makes changes to the rules, laws and even the MPEP itself in between new MPEP editions.
