Question for U.S. patent attorneys or anyone else ?

Question

How hard is the USPTO registration examination ? Have you taken it personally? How many months/years did you spend studying? Did you have to go to law school?

Thanks,

Max

Answer 1

Well, it was pretty intense when I passed it some years ago.  As I tell my students, "The good news is that it's an open-book test; the bad news is that the book is 3,400 pages thick."  (not quite, but you get the idea)  Anyone going into that exam without adequate preparation (especially on Sections 102 and 103) is simply wasting his or her time and money. Some of the questions are over a page long, with five multiple-choice answers that are each 500+ words, so there is very little time to look up anything after reading all that.

No, you do not need to be a lawyer to take the test (or to become a patent agent), but you need to prove you have a qualifying background in science or engineering (even if you are a lawyer).

The exam structure changes from time to time, so your mileage may vary (e.g., claims drafting from scratch versus claims error identification).  A good prep course will last a week (8 hours a day) and give you another 50 hours of practice, practice, practice.  

The failure rate for the USPTO patent registration has been high, in past years, and there are statistics on their website for recent years. There are several companies that offer prep courses for thousands of dollars, and some of their customers still fail the exam.