How to Study for the Patent Bar Exam
It is a hard exam. But once you know how to study for it, passing is very achievable!
The patent bar exam for those who do not know is an exam for people who have science and engineering degrees, to register to practice patent prosecution before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. What is patent proseuction? It is a unique practice of law. It is in essence the practice of determining whether or not an invention qualifies to receive special protection by the government preventing competitors from reverse engineering and or copying your technology or invention. In fact it is federal law which means that you do not need to be a lawyer or to have passed a state bar exam to practice before the USPTO.
Patents are a form of intangible property (unlike a car for example) called intellectual property and just like any property you can sell, or buy etc. For example, Ford received a patent on a self-driving feature that can drive itself back to the dealership if someone does not keep up with their payments. The car is a piece of property belonging to someone, but it may be made up of parts and features subject to dozens of patents like the self-driving feature.
To qualify for the patent bar exam, you need to have graduated with a major exactly on the USPTO’s list (Category A) or taking certain amount of classes like physics, math, chemistry etc. (Category B). It can be rigid, but as long as you have taken 40 credit hours of math, physics, or chemistry you will be fine even if you did not do particularly well.
Part of studying well for any exam is knowing what to do and what not to do. For the patent bar exam this is especially so. I can boil down studying for the patent bar into three parts.
Those parts are:
Picking the right patent bar prep course.
Using the prep course effectively and wisely.
Taking the patent bar practice exams appropriately and how to gauge if you are ready to take the actual exam.
Below, I assume that you are interested in patents and that you have some knowledge of patent law and terminology.
Step 1: Picking the Right Patent Bar Prep Course
This step is actually pretty easy because there is only one legitimate course out there and it is the PLI course. There are other courses, but PLI Patent Bar Review is the most clear and will teach what you need to know from a law standpoint. Honestly, if you want to pass it is the only option as the other courses are low quality and seek to influence buyers to buy their course because it is cheaper. PLI is way too expensive, it costs around 3,000 dollars but if you are a student or have a student email address you can get a student discount which lowers the cost to around 1,800 dollars. Honestly, I used my law school email but undergraduate will work fine as well. The main thing is to show that you are a student, and even if you are not a student email is all you really need. Please do not buy the course for 3,000 dollars unless you absolutely have no choice because nobody I know has spent that kind of money for the course.
You could also get your employer to pay for it if that is an option.
Back to the course, there are flaws on how Gene Quinn and John White try to prepare you for the patent bar (I have thought about making a supplement course to help people), but overall you will learn the core of what you need to know. The hard part is knowing how to use the material effectively. For example, trying to answer all the questions just using your own knowledge, huge no no. Instead looking up every question that you are unsure of the answer (which will be many questions) that is how you pass.
Step 2: Using the Prep Course Effectively and Wisely
My philosophy and the winning philosophy for how to prepare for the patent bar is that you practice how you play. Full disclosure, I like many people took the patent bar twice. The difference was the first time I basically did what the PLI course recommended which was answer as many questions as you could using your knowledge and look up the ones you have no idea about. I tried this approach and I got 55% on Patent Bar when I needed a 70% to pass. That was not a very close attempt. I waited two years until I was out of law school to take it again, so I had forgotten most of the material except for novelty, obviousness, and at a basic level how to write claims.
When decided to take the exam the second time I put about 100 hours in reading and watching each lecture video, and doing the course. This is significantly less than the 150 hours they recommend studying for the course. It took me less time because I already had a good understanding of the core law (because I was a patent associate at a law firm), I just completely forgot the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP) sections. For those who do not know that is what the patent bar tests besides codified law (U.S.C. Section 102 for instance) which the exam also tests.
First, I did the lectures out of order, I did the most heavily tested sections first, 700, 2100, 600, 1800, 1200 (700 in my opinion is the hardest section) then I went into chronological order starting from 100 and so on. As an aside, I do not recommend taking notes as it just is not a good use of time. The sections are independent of each other, some information reappears in multiple sections, but the information does not build. Next, I did a mini-exam if I had covered the sections the mini exam were testing, I did those in order 1 through 6. Beware, I would not worry about the homework and extra assignments as doing well on the mini exams should be your goal. The only exception is practice writing claims, it could be good for your general understanding of claims which go a long way in questions that involve claims. A score of 15/20 should be the goal on all mini exams but even if you don’t as long as your close will be fine going into the practice exams which are your last two weeks of prep.
Take all the time you need to look up answers in the MPEP. You will get faster as time goes on. Do it even if you know the answer because learning how to look things up quickly is a surefire way to pass the exam. For example, the question could be rather obscure like whether a disclosure shelved and indexed in a university library counts as prior art. Well you have to know from the course that the word indexed is significant, so search “indexed” in chapter 2100 patentability. My method was always to try to use words from the question, but this did not always work so you have to get creative and understand where things are located in the MPEP. For example, if it is a 1800 question (Patent Cooperation Treaty), and the question asks you how long can you wait to make priority claim for a PCT. You may see the term priority claims and searched 200 (Benefit and Priority Claims), you might find a link in 200 that takes you to the right section which is 1800 in the MPEP, but you casted your net in the wrong section. It will be hard for you to be efficient if you do this frequently.
Additionally, the look-up tool on the patent bar exam is pretty good. I liked it better than using the PDF search bar. I think they have improved its speed over time.
This is the Table of Contents of the MPEP (Note: Patent Laws/Rules Appendices are important to search)
Keep in mind that sometimes the mini exams are a little too hard, so do not be too hard on yourself if you are not hitting 15 out of 20, the averages usually are 13 or 14 out of 20 and the important thing is to understand why you made the mistake and make sure you remember how to get to the right answer.
Step 3: Using the Actual Practice Exams Appropriately and Gauging your Readiness for the Exam
Remember, you practice how you play. Since you were already practicing looking up answers on the mini-exams you will be ready for the post course. The post course contains the practice exams, and it contains exams on important cases like Bilski, or Alice in addition to the practice exams. I would say use your own judgement, some of the post course exams are completely unnecessary and will discourage you if anything else. Definitely do the 103 obviousness exam, the 101 patent eligible subject matter exam from what I remember. But the most important thing are the practice tests. There are three practice tests in total, each section is 50 questions, and each exam has two sections. Each section should take you 3 hours, which is part of the reason the test is hard. Efficiency is important on this exam.
The most recent exams are from 2003 which there are two and there is one exam from 2002. Part of what what makes PLI great is that they have modified the exam questions to reflect the current state of the patent laws. Note that the 2003 exams are harder than the 2002 exam, so you should indeed get a higher score on the 2002 exam. Gene Quinn and John White say you are good if you are around the 80% range on all the exams going into the patent bar exam, but this is not precise! Of course you are going to pass if you get 80% on all the practice exams. They can not tell you what is the lower limit of what you need to score on the practice exams. From my experience, the actual exam was as easy if not easier that 2002 exam (the third practice exam you take in the post course). These were my scores in the order they were presented in the course:
Exam 1 (Spring 2003) scores were 70 on part 1 and 60 on part 2 for an average of 65.
Exam 2 (Fall 2003) scores were 70 on part 1 and 62 on part 2 for average of 66.
Notice how my scores aren’t passing!
Exam 3 (2002) score was 78 on part 1 and part 2 I did not take because I decided to rest the day off before the exam. I assume I would have gotten a 70 or higher.
Considering the above, as long as you achieve an average score of 70 or higher on Exam 3, hopefully in the higher 70s you will be in good shape. If you are in the 50s or lower on exam 1, I would stop taking practice exams and use PLI’s software to find out the MPEP sections you are weak and review those extensively. It is really good to know for example, if you get a question that talks about 102 or novelty, then you know that you have to search 2100 because 2100 is all about patentability.
I hope this is helpful, patent attorneys (the majority who have passed the exam are also attorneys) are brilliant people but they are kind of obtuse at the same time. I mean, if you were to talk an everyday practicing a patent attorney, they would expect you to pass the exam but the advice they would give you to pass would out of touch with how to pass. Many patent attorneys took the exam before 2013 where the America Invents Act went into effect during the Obama administration. The exam has changed significantly and requires you to know the law from before 2013 and after 2013 (they are asking less pre-AIA questions as time goes on).
To my knowledge, this is the only article that discusses an actual strategy on how to use the PLI patent bar course on the internet. When I was studying, I found a person who passed the patent bar who posted his practice exam scores on reddit. I found that this was helpful, and I mostly did better than he did. In addition, you can access how well you are doing in the course and whether you are scoring better than your peers on the mini-exams. The course does a good job of giving you this information for self assessment.
The pass rate for the patent bar hovers in the 42-48% range but with the PLI course, solid understanding of the patent laws, and good look up skills passing is not as hard as you might think.
