European patent law Puns

Realizing more and more these days that I don't like practicing law. Current patent prosecution associate.

Hi all,

I am a chemistry graduate who is wanting to become a patent attorney. I did some research and it seems like a masters would be very helpful in getting accepted on a trainee course.

My favourite branches of chemistry are biological chemistry and environmental/ green chemistry. Does anyone have any advice on which would be a better masters in terms of job availability?

Also, has anyone who has done a chemistry undergraduate degree and then made the jump to patent attorney via a masters got any advice to give? I’m living in the UK.

Hi everyone, I have been having a lot of thoughts lately about going to law school, specifically the IP route since I love the idea of dealing with inventions and cutting-edge technology.

I am 23m and I possess a BSEE where I graduated with a 3.15 gpa. I am currently doing a masters degree in EE where I have a 3.84 gpa and I also have a decent amount of industry/research experience in the EE field. I should also mention that I do not have any student debt from both my undergrad and masters, however if I go to law school I would have to be taking out student loans. I am wondering if law school would even be worth it for me considering my background and if I go into patent prosecution. If so, what steps should I take next? Should I study for the LSAT or Patent Bar first? I'd appreciate all your responses, thank you!

*Candid comments only please. Feel free to rip this here joint apart; my feelings do not need coddling*

I know the choice is mine but I would love some feedback. I'm interested in patents and would like to pivot from engineering to become a patent attorney. For reference: standard weeks I bill 45-50hrs with years I billed 55-60hrs (avg over 50+ wk timeframe) so pls dont try to scare me with attorney work life balance. I'm Gucci with it.

My background:

• 28 years old
• 5 years working experience (aerospace industry)
• B.S. in aerospace engineering
  • top 10 program
  • 3.1 GPA
• M.S. in systems engineering w/aerospace focus
  • top 20 program
  • 3.95 GPA
  • Completed while working full time
• Married, no kids
• No student loans (me nor my wife)
• Current LSAT not good enough for T14 school (I didn't study very long)

(should I)

Get with this (T40-49 law school without student loans):

• Quit engineering job (spring 2022)
• Study + pass patent bar (summer 2022)
• Start law school (fall 2022)
  • T40-49 law school
  • 29 yrs old when classes start
• No student loans (wifes salary enough to cover T40-49 tuition rates)

(or)

Get with that (T14 law school with ~$110k student loans):

• Quit engineering job (spring 2022)
• Study + pass patent bar (summer 2022)
• Get 1yr job as patent agent
• Study longer for LSAT
• Start law school (fall 2023)
  • T14 law school
  • 30yrs old when classes start
• $110k +/- 20k in student loans

Attend a T40-T49 law school in the fall of 2022 or take a year to actually study for the LSAT and attend a T14 school in the fall of 2023? I'm not convinced that patent attorneys need T14 but I dont have a pure EE background so I think a T14 school would help get my foot in the door at my first job after graduation.

Also, is it short sighted to quit a $110k job, with a stable company, at a time when markets have sustained 10+ yr bull run for a pivot into an industry that is arguably over priced and easily affected by a potential market correction which would create a weak job market right as I graduate in 2025 or 2026? Fuck me that was a long sentence.

Anyways, appreciate the help and please dont hold back! Also, hope you caught the references to Black Sheep. Gota keep it fun.

I understand that you can submit a partial utility patent application in the UK to save time/money and secure a filing date. You submit part of the specification and drawings, you don't need to submit claims or request a search, and can wait up to 12 months to do so. In this way, you can put 'patent pending' on your marketing materials for 12 months while you do some market testing.

My question is, if at the end of the 12 month window you let the utility patent application lapse/expire, does it get published?

I will do my best to launch and get sales within the 12 month window, but if I don't, I would prefer to not drop £5000+ on a patent that I don't know will be profitable long term. So if I need more time, I would prefer the partial application didn't get published and become prior art. It would be nice if I could let it expire and it gets deleted by the patent office.

In the USA provisional patents are deleted if they're allowed to expire which is really useful. If 12 months isn't enough you can just let your provisional expire and you haven't lost anything.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks for your help!

I am currently a masters student in engineering. I had been working as an engineer (in the power sector) for a few years and decided to go back to pursue my masters.

I have been presented with an opportunity to be hired at a firm where they pay for me to go to a mid-tier law school to become a patent lawyer.

This would be much more lucrative than my engineering position, and likely much more interesting and a better usage of my personal talents. I worry however about the work life balance of it. I really enjoy my 7-3:30pm schedule and free weekends at my engineering gig. I get my hours would be more like 8-5 , which doesn't bother me if i truly find the work more interesting. How is the worklife balance for this type of law?

I am also fearful for the time commitment of law school while working fulltime for the law firm, but i have heard (don't shoot me please!) that a bachelors and masters in engineering is more work than pursuing a law degree and that it would be considerably easier.

I suppose the tldr is, I am in my mid twenties and facing a possible (free!) career change and I am wondering how you all enjoy your career and work life balance, and if fulltime work and lawschool is horrible.

We recently defended an opposition in which the opponent raised a large number of fairly weak and poorly defined added matter attacks that applied to all of the requests (incidentally, the provisional opinion had advised that none of the requests added matter). Following deliberation, the Opposition Division decided that all requests added matter and advised us to submit new requests. However, when issuing this decision, the Opposition Division did not give any guidance about which of the many added matter attacks they found persuasive and, when we asked for guidance about this, the Chairman seemed surprised and just advised that there were "lots of problems". Obviously, this left us in a difficult position when formulating our new requests as we were essentially trying to hit an invisible target. However, this is not the first time I have encountered an Opposition Division being reluctant to explain their reasons for refusing requests during oral Proceedings.

Is this opaqueness about the specific reasons for the refusal of requests during Oral Proceedings normal or did we just have an uncooperative Chairman? What are people's experiences with demanding that the Opposition Division fully explain their reasons for refusing requests at Oral Proceedings in order to enable new requests to be formulated?

I understand that a single company has more incentive to innovate if competitors can't use its innovation, but without patent laws, this technology would be adopted (virtually) universally, and every single decentralized innovation would be incorporated by other companies, something like the policentricity concept of science of Michael Polanyi.

Do models used to calculate the net effect of patent laws take into account the innovation that did not happen because the technology was monopolized? How is it measured?

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot)

> " 1.... The European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore "must be investigated for blocking a faster global vaccine rollout leading to the loss of countless lives.

> More than two million nurses from 28 countries across the globe filed a complaint Monday calling on the United Nations to investigate the rich countries that are blocking a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, an appeal that came as public health experts raced to understand the newly detected Omicron variant.

> "This unequal distribution of vaccines is not only grossly unjust for the people in low- and moderate-income countries who remain at high risk for contracting and further transmitting Covid-19, it also provides for the possibility for the development of new variants, some of which may be resistant to the current available vaccines," the filing reads.

> The complaint specifically targets the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore, wealthy nations that have stonewalled the patent waiver at the World Trade Organization, defying the will of a majority of that institution's member countries.

> In its complaint on Sunday, the coalition of nursing unions argues that the proliferation of variants is a predictable outcome of rich nations' refusal to "distribute vaccines and treatments equitably to the vast majority of people of low- and moderate-income countries.

> "High-income countries have procured upwards of 7 billion confirmed vaccine doses, while low income countries have only been able to procure approximately 300 million doses.

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: vaccine^#1 variant^#2 countries^#3 world^#4 nurses^#5

Post found in /r/worldpolitics2, [/r/worldnews

I read that there was little to no intellectual property enforcement in China in the 80s and 90s, and it helped them to appropriate the foreign technology, and only when they matched foreign technology they started to enforce IP laws.

It makes me wonder if developed countries such as the US, European ones, Japan, South Korea, etc would be worse without patent laws while African, Latin American, and poor Asian countries would be better than they are now because the former would not have a monopoly on their innovation and the latter would have access to more technology than they have now.

I’m graduating with a biomedical engineering degree in the spring and am applying for this masters program as a back up in case I don’t get a patent engineer position at a law firm (it’s getting close to graduation and I have no offers yet). I want to be sure that spending an additional $40 k on the program is worth it. Has anyone completed these programs and was it worth it ?

I’m thinking about getting a patent law-related custom license plate for my car. Max is seven characters. So far, my ideas include:

• PHOSITA
• PTNTBOI
• 101 H8R
• PATENTR

Anybody else have suggestions (or existing license plates you want to show off)?