Selecting a patent firm

Started by Raja, 08-14-17 at 03:35 PM

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Raja

Hello,
I am curious to know the pros and cons of working as a trainee EPA in small patent firms (less than 10 attorneys) in Germany. I am also interested to know your pov of working in a new patent firms with fewer employees, less than 10. How do you select a patent firm (with which you want to work) in case if you get admitted (as trainee) in more than one firm?

Thank you for your replies.
Cheers, Raj.

bartmans

Dear Raj,
In general you would not be so lucky as to have a choice. Especially in Germany during the last 5 years hiring new trainees by law firms has been at an all-time low and only since very recently this has changed.

Further, to my opinion the size of the firm in which you are trained is less important than the attitude of your mentor(s)/trainer(s). Does your mentor spend sufficient time and attention to your work and does (s)he discuss the results with you? Do you work only for one mentor (with the risk of having a one-sided education) or are you able to work with multiple seasoned European patent attorneys? Are you involved in discussions with clients, especially during the first phase of the invention definition?
These kind of things are more important than the size of the firm (although, of course, size may influence these aspects of the training practice).

Raja

Hello Bartmans:
Thanks for your input. Yes, it is very difficult to get a trainee position here! Especially if you are not good in German. But, also, I notice at least 1 or 2 trainee vacancies every two weeks. Since I am trying to get a trainee position I am eager to know all these information. Already attended a interview and unfortunately not successful. So hoping my best to get a position (sending job application only to firms with more international clients). The tips about single or several mentor training a candidate, discussion with clients, will be helpful when I go for interviews, a valid point to ask during discussion. I guess this will make my interview so nice. Are there any tip in finding all patents filed from a particular representative/firm? E.g. suppose QQ & partner is a patent firm and how to find all patent filed by QQ & partner? Just curious to know the kind of patents a firm handles.
Regards,
Raja.

bartmans

Hi Raja,

The only public database that I know off where it is possible to search for agent data is Patenscope from WIPO. You can do this by searching the name of the agent firm in the 'rpa' filed (in advanced search mode type: rpa agent)

Tobmapsatonmi

Hi Bart, Raja - the EPO register also permits agent (and other criteria) searching.  It used to be able to be conducted from the "advanced" search page, which I can no longer find  >:(, but you can still do it from the simple search page linked below.

https://register.epo.org/regviewer

In the query box, just put in re=agent name ("re" is for "representative").

Here's an example using a larger firm.  Note it truncates the list after 10000 hits, so you might want to also limit it with other identifiers.
https://register.epo.org/smartSearch?searchMode=smart&query=re%3Dcarpmaels

Here's the page for the possible bibliographic  identifiers: https://register.epo.org/help?topic=fieldidentifier&lng=en

So for example you could put in the query box

re=carpmaels (and) pd="2015:2017"

to get only those publishing within the last two years (tested and this narrowed it down to ~ 3700 vs. the over 10K that I got before).

Many other ways of narrowing the search are permitted. 

Any/all disclaimers you see on this forum used by members more experienced and/or smarter than I, are hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.

I'm doing well as of 08-09-18 @ 18:38 hours, and regret only not getting that 1000th post. Hope all are doing well indeed! Thanks!

Raja

Hello Tobmapsatonmi and Bartmans,
Thanks.
Regards,
Raj.



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