How should a future patent attorney choose a law school?

Articles and Publications, Patent

AcademicEggHeadThe new USNews law school rankings have been released.  Everyone knows that the rankings are worthless, but we follow them anyway.  Engineers and scientists usually do pretty well on the LSAT and often end up with the following law school options:  

  • Attend a highly-ranked law school;
  • Attend a lower-ranked law school with a renowned intellectual property program; or
  • Attend a lower-ranked law school as a night student and continue making money during the day.

The name of the law school matters most when you are looking for your first job out of law school.  Many people advise students to attend the highest ranked school where they can gain admittance.  Others would advise you to go to the school that offers the best financial package.  Not many advocate part-time solution — because it is such a hard road to work full-time then attend school four nights a week.  However, some of the most skillful attorneys that I know went through school that way.

What is your advice for hopeful pre-law students? Please leave a comment:

Snippets: Review of Developments in Intellectual Property Law

Articles and Publications, Patent,

MBHB’s snippetsTM newsletter provides a timely review of developments in intellectual property law. Here is a table of contents of the most recent issue (March 2005: Volume 3, Issue 1):

  1. Daniel Boehnen and Deana Larkin, Trends in E-Discovery: New Local Rules and Recent Judicial Opinions.
  2. Michael Greenfield, Jennifer Pope, Dennis Crouch, and Elaine Chang, The Primary Source for Claim Construction: Dictionary or Specification.
  3. Kevin Noonan, The Continued Confusion Over Written Description.
  4. Dennis Crouch and Baltazar Gomez, Legislative Update: Joint Research Agreements May Protect Patent Rights.

You can e-mail the editor (snippets@mbhb.com) to receive a PDF copy of the newsletter.  Include your mailing address if you would like a hard-copy.  In the e-mail, please indicate your technology and legal interest: (Biotech, Electrical, Software, Chemical, Mechanical, Litigation, and/or Prosecution). 

Past Issues:

Intellectual Property Podcasting

Articles and Publications, Patent

Podcasting is catching on as an extension of the blog.  According to the Wikipedia, a podcast is like an audio magazine subscription: a subscriber receives regular audio programs delivered via the Internet, and can listen to them at their leisure.

Podcasts differ from traditional Internet audio in two important ways. In the past, listeners have had to either tune in to web radio on a schedule, or they have had to search for and download individual files from web pages. Podcasts are much easier to get. They can be listened to at any time because a copy is on the listener’s computer or portable music player (hence the "pod" in "podcasting"), and they are automatically delivered to subscribers, so no active downloading is required.

Using podcast technology, for instance, a podcasting program can automatically download new .mp3 files from your favorite blog.  Of course, you can always just click on the .mp3 broadcast from your browser and listen to the podcast through your computer’s speakers.

So far, I know of three podcasting groups in the IP world so far:

Look for the inaugural Patently-O Podcast coming next month.

Aside: Since I am discussing blogging, I would recommend purchasing the newest version of Blogjet.  It is great and integrates very nicely with Typepad.