Navigating Career Crossroads: IP Passion vs. Unrelated Opportunities
Description
- Career Crossroads: Facing the choice between pursuing IP passion or taking unrelated job offers due to being underemployed.
- IP Landscape Overview: Explaining the complexities within Intellectual Property (IP) law, highlighting trademark, patent, and various specialized fields within sciences.
- Career Realities: Emphasizing the challenges and prerequisites within different IP sectors - patent prosecution, litigation, trademarks, and licensing.
- Educational Requirements: Underlining the significance of advanced degrees and the patent bar admission for competitive advantage in the IP field.
- Realistic Career Paths: Advising on the competitiveness and difficulty of establishing a career in IP without the requisite scientific background or credentials.
I love IP and the scene, but I'm underemployed and just move on. The only callback I would have was for something to put you on a rate. If they offer me a job, should I take it? Should I hang in there looking for something in IP or the ship? How badly is what is going to feel completely unrelated?
It's a good question. So, let's talk a little bit about IP. So I, again, this person says I love IP. I'd love to stay in it, but I need to be more employed and desperate and move on. The only callback I've had is for something completely unrelated. If they offer me a job, I will take it. Should I hang in there, keep looking for something in IP, or jump ship?
How bad would it go on a completely unrelated field of factor? Okay, so IP, I want to tell you a couple of things about IP. So in IP, you typically have, I'll just tell you, trademark; then you have a patent, hard science, which is like physics and stuff. And then you have a patent; there's patent prosecution, hard science.
And then you have life science, which is biochemistry. So then you have hard science, which will be electrical engineering. And this is interesting. I just want to show you because this may save you your career. What I'm going to tell you right now is patent, and you have patent lit, which is the same thing.
You have hard science and. Soft science, I guess I would just say IP let, and then, and I guess you could say, I'm sorry, I'm just excited we're having a rainstorm here in Los Angeles. We have yet to have one of those years, or not years, months. Okay. It's pet litigation. Then you have; what else do you have?
And then you have licensing. Okay. So let me, and then you have, and then also, you have; I just want to make sure everyone understands the landscape of IP because many people want to go into it and don't know what the hell is going on. Then you have people, bachelors. Degrees in sciences, then you have people with sciences or computers, et cetera.
I would say, or sciences, it could be sciences, math, you have people with masters, PhDs, and then you have people admitted to the patent bar. I'm not even going to explain to people how you have to do that, but you have to, in the science, then navigate it. Okay, so what I think is insane is there are LLM programs out there that will take anyone that will give you an LLM, an intellectual property law.
Completely insane. So, let's talk about IP briefly and see if that's a good fit for you because I have yet to learn who you are or what you're doing. So trademark copyright is complicated because it's the only practice area that, that it's anyway, it's the only practice here that you don't need to be a patent, you're going to miss the patent bar for, and you also have transactional litigation.
But the problem with trademarks and copyrights is they're non-transactional, which should be litigation. So, the problem with trademarks and copyrights is that they are often dependent on the economy. So the economy, if it's busy. There'll be a lot of new businesses starting, so this will be going on.
But if the economy's not busy, the trademark and copyright attorneys lose their jobs. So, it's a hazardous practice area to be in. And the litigation can be steady in some firms, but in others, it can't. Trademarks and copyrights are very difficult. The other thing is that most fees are in this practice area; our area is piecemeal.
So, if someone does a trademark or copyright or a trademark, they might charge them a thousand dollars or whatever, and then they renew it, but it's not. It's tough for attorneys to live in a trimmer. There's only a little work in big firms. It's just a tricky thing and not impossible, but having a career doing that is tough.
You can, some people do, but it isn't easy. Then you have patent prosecution. So, this is something that is a good practice area. You can do well. There are almost always jobs for people who do this because it's very complex. It takes a lot of education. The work is hard. It requires a lot of concentration when you're doing it.
The patent prosecution jobs are typically in the hard sciences or life sciences. So this is one where it's at to fry Pete. But you have to be admitted to the patent bar. To be admitted to the patent bar, you have to be, you have to have a bachelor's in some sort of science, and then you have to, and preferably, if you want to do well at it, you have to have a master's degree, a Ph.D. to get the best jobs.
And these are the people who will do the best in patent prosecution and get the most jobs. Other people that have the highest degrees. So, do you have? So I'm saying why it's so wild that there are these LLM programs and stuff. It is the only way that you're going to get up a decent position.
Trademarks are very difficult. Patent prosecution is tricky because you have to have all these degrees. Then, you will be graded throughout your career based on whether you have a master's or PhD. So, a lot of times, life science is the hardest. Firms will only hire people with a PhD in bio or chemistry.
So if you don't have a PhD or SOL, and then you have a patent, then you have patent litigation. So, patent litigation is also the company that wants people to be admitted to the patent bar and have a master's or PhD now. There are certainly a lot of places you could do patent litigation, but many people, many big companies, expect their patent litigators to have that.
So, this is how difficult it is to get into IP. You can't just say, I want to do IP. If you get into IP, you're going to be part of this whole class structure where the best attorneys are going to all be admitted to the patent bar, where if you're in the patent litigation to get the best work, you're going to need to be in the patent bar and have some hard science.
It isn't easy. You can say, I love IP, but this is what it is. If you want to be competitive, you'll need to have all of this type of experience, and that's where it's at. And if you don't have it, that's a problem. Now, licensing is a little different, but also, again, that's something where there's just a little work.
So, you want to go into patent litigation. You're going to need to have a scientific background. Most of the time, you want to do patent prosecution. Or you want to do all, this is the world. And so, if you do not have one of these backgrounds, it isn't easy to get into IP. So these are the people you're competing with.
If you have that, then all patent prosecutors, if you get them into the patent bar, someone will hire you. It's challenging work. A small firm can; there are firms and three people in Aspen, Colorado, that do patents for Microsoft, and Amazon doesn't; you can always get a patent prosecution job. Trademark is very dependent on the economy.
The work is piecemeal because it's tough for firms to have ongoing work, but they can pay you. And then most of this whole IP world is dominated by people with degrees in these sciences and PhDs. So all I'm saying is anybody who wants to go into IP should know this is the world they're getting into.
And if you can't compete with these degrees and stuff on this level, it's probably not a career decision. I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm not saying that to ruin your dreams. But I've seen so many people that come out, and I want to be an IP, and they don't. That would be me saying would be an example that I want to play an example.
I want to fly commercial airliners. Yeah, I could probably learn how to do it. But I'm going to be competing with people that were in the Navy and have more hours where the Air Force and we're able to, it's, you have to go into something where you're going to be competitive as all, and I'm not trying to be rude.
I'm just saying this is the world. And so if you don't have that, that can be very hard. Others are patent litigators and things that file suits that need to have these degrees. So it's possible, but sorry, talking about IP, I'm happy to answer if you want to ask a follow-up question. It's essential to understand what IP is.
