This was how I went about studying:
I READ all the PLI chapters (I had no desire to listen to John White talk, as cool as he is), and payed special attention to 2100, 700, 1800, and 1200. In the week before the test, all I did was manually do the 2002/2003 exams, then try to go over all of the ones reported to be repeats once a day. The day before the exams, I looked over the rumored questions on mypatentbar.com.
Here are a few observations:
1. My test was relatively light on PCT and Appeals, which was surprising, as most of the common wisdom out there indicate that these are heavily tested areas. It was also very light on repeats. I’d say no more than 6-7 from the 2002/2003 exams, and perhaps another 5 that I picked up from the various sites (patentbarquestions.com/mypatentbar.com). Every repeat I had was verbatim, down to the order of the answer selection. Once I realized that the test was going to be super light on repeats, I started to think I was going to be SoL. However, see #2.
2. NOTHING makes up for knowing generally where stuff is in the MPEP. Because of the lack of repeats, I was scrambling for the entire test period, but I was apparently able to effectively suss out correct answers. I found the index to be very unresponsive to searching because searches look at the whole index, not a chapter identified by letter.
3. The PDF software. I have no complaints with how easy it was to open and get to various parts of the MPEP, or with the scaling of the window. However, the search function was definitely flawed. There were a couple of occasions where I KNEW something was in a chapter, but the search wouldn’t find it. On three occasions, I had to close the MPEP, reopen it, then re-search – which then found the reference I was looking for. Moral of the story – if you KNOW that something is there, don’t blindly follow the search function.
4. My test was absurdly heavy on 103 rejections. Before the test yesterday, if I had read that statement, my initial though would have been “money in the bank”. However, these questions were very nuanced and especially difficult. Due to the high question amount (at least ten 103 questions), I’m thinking that some of them must have been experimental questions. However, I’d make sure that you spend a good chunk of time going over the subject matter.
5. New matter – KSR and recent court cases WERE tested. I hadn’t looked at any of it, because I was too concerned with learning everything else! However, it was super obvious when they were testing it (they actually say… reject under KSR because of X as an answer choice), and a quick read of the supplemental documents allowed me to get those questions correct.
Good luck to all those still studying!
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Topic: patent bar preparation (Read 1219 times)
