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[khazzah]

Has any Patent Agent/Attorney/Engineer, who is not a US citizen/permanent resident and working on a job visa in the USA, ever applied for a export license for practicing patent prosecution in the US?  .

As Isaac already pointed out, a *person* does not get an export license. An export license is for a piece of technology.

You appear to be asking about an export license as if it were something like a visa or security clearance.  An export license is not a personal thing, so you cannot obtain one for yourself. 

[Patent_Agent]

Hi bardencj, thanks for your reply.  You mentioned that you have satisfied that the technology you usually work on are generally under EAR99 / NLR, or you check on a case by case basis.  How do you usually do that?  Do you actually go through the classification list each time you receive disclosure form from the inventor to draft an application?  But if you have already gone through the disclosure form before checking to see if it qualifies as NLR and in case it doesn’t fall under the NLR, haven't you already violated the EAR?

Can anyone suggest a practical manner in which I, as a non-US patent petitioner, deal with such issues.  My career is at jeopardy, and I am really worried. 

...  From a compliance perspective, an export permit is usually not required provided the technology does not fall into a classification listed in EARs as requiring such a permit, given the foreign national/country in question.  Since most of my clients are American or Canadian, and because my usual area of practice has very few dual-use technologies, I have satisfied myself that most every export is EAR99 / NLR or has controls that do not apply to Canadians.  If I am unsure because of the nationality of the inventor or the technology is not typical of my practice, then I check again.

I am not a lawyer and certainly don't have significant expertise on the EARs, but this seems to me to be a prudent practice for any non-resident or limited recognition agents/attorneys.

[bardencj]

Sorry for the late reply.

Your question is a tricky one.  Since handing a document outlining technology to a foreign national, even within the US, constitutes an export, you are right to be concerned about it.  The issue largely depends on your citizenship.  If you are a citizen of a country that does not have too many export restrictions, then you will probably not have this issue too much.  But if you are, say, North Korean, you will have lots of problems!

I'm not an export reg expert, but seems to me it would be prudent to flip through the EAR classifications and figure out which areas of technology you would need to watch out for (this can be done by looking at what export controls apply to your country of citizenship, then cross-referencing that to each technology you might see -- probably a whole day's work but doable).  Then, if somebody comes to you saying "I want to patent this thing that does X", if X sounds like something you might not be allowed to see, then do more digging on the question before accepting a disclosure.  Not a perfect system, but it might save you some trouble.