Patent agent Interview Questions

Asked which projects I might be involved in. Opportunities for pro-Bono work.

Is there any certain, or established style of specification drafting in your company?

I don't remember what my reply was, but I do remember thinking, why is he asking me this question, I am a patent agent applying for a patent agent position.

I answered yes, and provided an example of how I planned to meet deadlines by not expending a lot of time preparing an amendment, but instead first vetting the planned response with senior counsel. This was an excellent question and response. And as it turns out, a few months later Microsoft began following the same paradigm, requiring outside counsel to submit office action recommendations rather than a prepared amendments.

His preferance was to write the claims first. When I answered they other way, he did not like it!

I said I felt capable of doing prosecution now, but thought I would be better prepared to draft applications after prosecution experience. In retrospect, I should have added that the preparedness depends on the difficulty of the application, which can vary quite a bit. Some applications are 100 pages long and full of chemical iterations, and this type of application requires considerable experience to write.

I made it clear that, although at times decisions must be made quickly on limited data, I prefer to gather what science/data is available and let that drive my decision making.

How did you answer this question? (Optional)