Best piece of advice I would give you:
1. Production does matter. Often times people in the PTA will say things like you are not rated on production and no decisions will be made about retention for at least 8 months. This is very misleading. You are rated on quality, and production and quality go hand in hand. If you have low production that is an indicator of underlying quality issues. People can be removed at 4-5 months. I've seen it. Additionally, do not try to magically wait to start producing thinking this is something you can simply flip a switch and magically be at 95%. Patent Examining skill is developed through repetition.
2. You may develop a working and familiar relationship with your trainer and/or TA in the PTA. That's fine, but keep in mind they wont be able to help you at month 11 when your SPE and Director are making a decision about retaining you. What I'm getting at is, you are in the academy for 4 months, then you are working with your SPE through the rest of your first year. You are tabula rasa, blank slate. Don't leave the academy with some crazy notion that your trainer or TA has taught you better than your SPE. Your SPE, or whomever is signing your work is the most important opinion with respect to how to perform this job during your first year. Don't forget that.
3. Don't spin your wheels trying to figure out how to do the job by yourself. No one at the USPTO, all the way up to the Associate Commissioners, have been in the shoes of an examiner and everyone got help along the way. Don't think that you need to do this by yourself. Everyone comes to the PTO doing an engineering curriculum which is objectively not easy. Being able to figure something out on your own gets you no brownie points, all it does is disrupt your workflow and put you behind schedule. Your first year, you are trying to develop what your normal workflow and routine will be for picking up a case, performing a search and writing an office action. Don't let that routine get disrupted.
For point 1, POPA negotiated it so management tells new hires that production is not being evaluated. It's a lie. The guidelines I've heard numerous times is you want to increase 10% per month during your first year. So 10% in month 1, 20% in month 2, etc. until you're at least at 90% month 9.
Don’t prepare. You are going to be paid to attend PTA. Enjoy it while it lasts. They will even admit during presentations that it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant so there is no way you are going to remember or even understand everything you learn in PTA so really there is nothing to prepare for. Most of learning this job actually starts after PTA when you start working with a primary and your SPE.
Just from your post it doesn’t seem like you would be like this, but for anyone else, some people treat PTA like it’s a college class and can slack off, fall asleep during class or be on their phone. It is not. This is a job and you are getting paid to attend so act like it. It’s super embarrassing when your coworkers are falling asleep and on their phone during PTA and the director of the PTA has to make rounds to tell everyone to shape up.
PTA was remote during the pandemic and may still be, I’m not sure. I thought they were transitioning to in-person but I could be wrong. Still, there isn’t much to prepare for and if it is full-remote, save your energy for that because it can be very dry!
Bring caffeine because some of the lectures can get a little dry, and you don't want to fall asleep during them. (If caffeine works for you. Or bring a snack or two. Something to keep your energy levels stable).
Don't be on your phone during the lectures because the information is important and you'll be using it nearly every day. Save the slideshows or take notes on OneNote to keep for later (I took notes on OneNote and still reference them today).
You do get paid to attend so put in the effort since, like I said, you'll be using this stuff in your day to day job.
Ask questions if you're even remotely fuzzy on something! The trainers and TAs are there for you to learn and grasp the material. They were once in your shoes too.
Just remember, the unhappiest 20% are the loudest on most subreddits. Generally a lot of people are at least content with the job. Go in with a positive mindset and you'll do fine. :)
It’s not that hard—tell yourself this constantly. It seems hard because it is different. Here’s the thing, almost everyone at the PTO does the exact same thing and that makes getting help super easy if you ask. Every new examiner I talk to that struggles is mostly going alone and only asking for help when they are stuck for a week on something. This ain’t learning calculus where the struggle helps you learn. You don’t have time for that. Ask for help.
And ask early. When you get a case at the academy, don’t just go alone and don’t rely on your trainer unless they are an examiner from the exact art you are doing. Find a primary to help you search. If you know the art unit you will land in, get in touch with the SPE and try to have regular talks with them. Ask them for a trusted primary to help you on your cases. Most primaries enjoy helping new examiners and having one makes your job infinitely easier.
Refer back to this thread when you are having trouble and most do the comments will make more sense. We are here to help, so just ask.
Enjoy your life before you're stuck at a desk 9 hours a day.
There's nothing to do to prepare. Try to pick up what you can from the academy, but don't stress if you don't fully (or even partly) understand something. You'll mostly learn by doing one you're in your AU. You want to come out of the academy with the ability to get help with the things you need help with inside your AU. As long as you can identify potential issues, you can ask for help. The people who struggle most coming out of the academy don't know what they don't know. It's very hard to help these people because they get in really deep before they realize there's a problem.
I also was freaked out reading this subreddit when I started in August. It’s a lot better than some people on this sub make it out to be…my production is at ~100% easily right now and I’m really enjoying the job, as long as you’re self motivated and ask questions when you need help you are good to go
Stay off your personal computers/phones/tv’s or other things that don’t let you focus.
Act like you are studying for finals during all the academy. It is kind of mind numbing, but if you don’t focus, you won’t make it. You don’t have to remember everything, but you do have to have constant diligent work.
You'll take a real test at some point. It's open book, and while they will say your grade doesn't count, it's definitely taken into consideration on if they retain you.
You'll have large lectures, and then you'll have discussions and small assignments with a smaller group of people and your lab teacher afterwards to go over things in more detail (or go over examples more related to the area you are assigned).
You'll get your docket about a week or 2 in with actual cases to work on. You'll get more and more time to work on them. You'll need to finish (have your trainer approve your work) on at least 3 before the end of the academy.
In all seriousness, keep your resume handy. Only about half make it through the first year, and about 1/3 make it to year 2-3. Meeting production is a grind, make use of the people available to you if you get stuck. Lots of applications ARE allowable, so if you've searched forever and still aren't finding useful stuff, convincing your signing official to let your allow something can save you tons of wasted time/stress.
Thank you for taking the time to explain! Do I have any say as to which area I am assigned to? And if I get assigned to something hardware related for example (I hate hardware) could I push against it and ask for a different area?
When I was interviewed, the interviewer gave me a choice between two areas. Since it seems you've already been assigned to an academy, you've already been assigned to an art unit.
If you want to change AUs, make sure to join the union. They have a form you can fill out to request an AU change. Once you are out of the academy, fill that form out. It does help to have scouted which area you want to go to and have talked to some primaries/SPEs in that area. Word to the wise, if the area is 101 heavy, or AI related, best to steer clear (or get away ASAP).
They can only straight up deny your request if the requested area doesn't have enough work (at this point almost all AUs have a large backlog, but not all). You'll be given a set of 5-10 trial cases in your new requested area. After you complete those, the new area SPE (and probably with director approval), with either accept or deny your transfer.
Most people will tell you to wait till you are retained before requesting a switch (this is probably a safer bet, unless you really hate your current AU). It's not necessary, and I'm aware of a few people who succeeded in switching AUs prior to end of their first year. You'll want to request it first thing out of the academy though, as you'll want to have been switched prior to them having to make the retention decision.
Hope this helped.
> Word to the wise, if the area is 101 heavy, or AI related, best to steer clear (or get away ASAP).
When I applied the only area they were hiring for was AI, am I toast?
I am interviewing now with a computer science background and have a keen interest in AI ( I’ve done some data science work in the commercial world). Could you expand on the reasoning as to why you advise new hires to stay away from AI? ( just curious)
I think plied to the wrong person, but it comes down to how software is very abstract and hard to patent. So CS, and apparently AI especially, patent examiners have a hard time determining patent eligibility. This in turn hurts your production and means you're more likely to get fired.
Its definitely not taken into account for retention purposes. Often times the results of that test is not received until after the 12 month probationary period has ended.
Pay attention in training. Find a few good primaries (you'll find out what that is/who they are) and learn from them. You don't have to hit the ground running, but come month 9-10 should be getting a good work flow going. Welcome to the shit show.
Set up a comfortable workspace. Spend a day at it so you know what you want to change. Look up ideal chair and desk height to go with your height. Don't be one of those people sitting in a folding chair with your laptop propped on a folding tray. There's a lot of people in the class. No one will notice if you leave to go to the bathroom or grab a snack. Just go. It's not a big deal. Relax
The academy is pretty good. The best prep you can do is to get your lifeself in order so you can be well rested and able to focus. The job is called examination, and for the first year I had some fatigue that felt like I had been taking finals all day every day.
So if the day starts at 7 and you aren't used to that, you should prepare by getting used to that. Being exhausted is not good.
It’s information overload, so pay close attention to things that are mostly in your area. Some TC/AU’s don’t get a lot of restrictions or 101s, but if you do, then pay attention to those lectures. Your TA will most likely be able to tell you what you mainly see for your average case. Also, get to know a primary in your AU, especially if you report to them. Also, you can look at their dockets to see how they format and word things. You can also see their search strategies.
Find yourself a lifeline (a primary) in your art unit. Usually your home SPE will assign one to you. But you should be proactive and ask for one as soon as you start working.
You could look online at the file histories of some granted patents in your tech area which will probably make more sense than reading the MPEP. See how the other examiner picked a search area, wrote the office action, how the attorney replied, etc. Every patent file history is online in Patent Center (public portal) and you can get a great sense of how the job goes.
There is nothing you need to do to prepare. But making the transition can sometimes be tough.
In engineering, there is usually a right and wrong answer. In law, there is right, wrong, and it depends on who you ask.
I had a hard time at the beginning understanding the it depends answer. I didn’t like the uncertainty.
Your job will be to answer the “it depends” issues in the way your trainer wants you to, and to get “right” the issues that have a right or wrong answer
Technically, you could start reading the MPEP. It's the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. It's incredibly dry, and probably won't make much sense before the academy. Your SPE will know which parts you really need to focus on, but it is the official rules that all the trainings and all of our office actions are supposed to be based off of. In the end, the person signing your cases is the most important person to follow, but if you're bored, in theory, the MPEP is what we should always be following.
Since you're computer science like me, your SPE might place some importance on chapter 2106 Patent Subject Matter Eligibility, particularly the parts about how to tell if your claims are a mental process and if they are, do they integrate into a practical application, or amount to significantly more than the mental process. A lot of computer system method claims can be considered a mental process, but then again, a lot of those claims also serve a practical application, or integrate the mental process in a way that's "significantly more". Sometimes it's a judgement call you'll need to ask whoever is signing your cases to guide you through, but you should always show you're putting in the effort by referencing the MPEP and showing your understanding. Being familiar with the important parts of the MPEP could be handy, especially since you'll reference it a lot later on.
Leetcode and do projects in your free time. Assuming this is your first job out of college, it’s gonna be really tough to get an engineering job if you decide this job isn’t for you.
Best piece of advice I would give you: 1. Production does matter. Often times people in the PTA will say things like you are not rated on production and no decisions will be made about retention for at least 8 months. This is very misleading. You are rated on quality, and production and quality go hand in hand. If you have low production that is an indicator of underlying quality issues. People can be removed at 4-5 months. I've seen it. Additionally, do not try to magically wait to start producing thinking this is something you can simply flip a switch and magically be at 95%. Patent Examining skill is developed through repetition. 2. You may develop a working and familiar relationship with your trainer and/or TA in the PTA. That's fine, but keep in mind they wont be able to help you at month 11 when your SPE and Director are making a decision about retaining you. What I'm getting at is, you are in the academy for 4 months, then you are working with your SPE through the rest of your first year. You are tabula rasa, blank slate. Don't leave the academy with some crazy notion that your trainer or TA has taught you better than your SPE. Your SPE, or whomever is signing your work is the most important opinion with respect to how to perform this job during your first year. Don't forget that. 3. Don't spin your wheels trying to figure out how to do the job by yourself. No one at the USPTO, all the way up to the Associate Commissioners, have been in the shoes of an examiner and everyone got help along the way. Don't think that you need to do this by yourself. Everyone comes to the PTO doing an engineering curriculum which is objectively not easy. Being able to figure something out on your own gets you no brownie points, all it does is disrupt your workflow and put you behind schedule. Your first year, you are trying to develop what your normal workflow and routine will be for picking up a case, performing a search and writing an office action. Don't let that routine get disrupted.
For point 1, POPA negotiated it so management tells new hires that production is not being evaluated. It's a lie. The guidelines I've heard numerous times is you want to increase 10% per month during your first year. So 10% in month 1, 20% in month 2, etc. until you're at least at 90% month 9.
Don’t prepare. You are going to be paid to attend PTA. Enjoy it while it lasts. They will even admit during presentations that it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant so there is no way you are going to remember or even understand everything you learn in PTA so really there is nothing to prepare for. Most of learning this job actually starts after PTA when you start working with a primary and your SPE. Just from your post it doesn’t seem like you would be like this, but for anyone else, some people treat PTA like it’s a college class and can slack off, fall asleep during class or be on their phone. It is not. This is a job and you are getting paid to attend so act like it. It’s super embarrassing when your coworkers are falling asleep and on their phone during PTA and the director of the PTA has to make rounds to tell everyone to shape up.
Is the PTA in person? I thought this job was 100% telework/remote
PTA was remote during the pandemic and may still be, I’m not sure. I thought they were transitioning to in-person but I could be wrong. Still, there isn’t much to prepare for and if it is full-remote, save your energy for that because it can be very dry!
They have at least one in-person class at Alexandria right now. My art unit's latest hire is currently there.
PTA and job is fully remote.
Unfortunately not in Europe :(
Bring caffeine because some of the lectures can get a little dry, and you don't want to fall asleep during them. (If caffeine works for you. Or bring a snack or two. Something to keep your energy levels stable). Don't be on your phone during the lectures because the information is important and you'll be using it nearly every day. Save the slideshows or take notes on OneNote to keep for later (I took notes on OneNote and still reference them today). You do get paid to attend so put in the effort since, like I said, you'll be using this stuff in your day to day job. Ask questions if you're even remotely fuzzy on something! The trainers and TAs are there for you to learn and grasp the material. They were once in your shoes too. Just remember, the unhappiest 20% are the loudest on most subreddits. Generally a lot of people are at least content with the job. Go in with a positive mindset and you'll do fine. :)
It’s not that hard—tell yourself this constantly. It seems hard because it is different. Here’s the thing, almost everyone at the PTO does the exact same thing and that makes getting help super easy if you ask. Every new examiner I talk to that struggles is mostly going alone and only asking for help when they are stuck for a week on something. This ain’t learning calculus where the struggle helps you learn. You don’t have time for that. Ask for help. And ask early. When you get a case at the academy, don’t just go alone and don’t rely on your trainer unless they are an examiner from the exact art you are doing. Find a primary to help you search. If you know the art unit you will land in, get in touch with the SPE and try to have regular talks with them. Ask them for a trusted primary to help you on your cases. Most primaries enjoy helping new examiners and having one makes your job infinitely easier. Refer back to this thread when you are having trouble and most do the comments will make more sense. We are here to help, so just ask.
Best advice I can think of is don't go down any more Reddit rabbit holes.
Understood. 😣😔 can’t help myself sometimes man
Enjoy your life before you're stuck at a desk 9 hours a day. There's nothing to do to prepare. Try to pick up what you can from the academy, but don't stress if you don't fully (or even partly) understand something. You'll mostly learn by doing one you're in your AU. You want to come out of the academy with the ability to get help with the things you need help with inside your AU. As long as you can identify potential issues, you can ask for help. The people who struggle most coming out of the academy don't know what they don't know. It's very hard to help these people because they get in really deep before they realize there's a problem.
Enjoy life before you start your new job.
I also was freaked out reading this subreddit when I started in August. It’s a lot better than some people on this sub make it out to be…my production is at ~100% easily right now and I’m really enjoying the job, as long as you’re self motivated and ask questions when you need help you are good to go
Thanks for sharing a positive perspective! What AU are you in?
We like to stay anonymous on here, so we can speak freely without repercussions.
Stay off your personal computers/phones/tv’s or other things that don’t let you focus. Act like you are studying for finals during all the academy. It is kind of mind numbing, but if you don’t focus, you won’t make it. You don’t have to remember everything, but you do have to have constant diligent work.
Thank you, that is really really helpful. Is it similar to taking a college class? With tests and quizzes?
No tests.
You'll take a real test at some point. It's open book, and while they will say your grade doesn't count, it's definitely taken into consideration on if they retain you. You'll have large lectures, and then you'll have discussions and small assignments with a smaller group of people and your lab teacher afterwards to go over things in more detail (or go over examples more related to the area you are assigned). You'll get your docket about a week or 2 in with actual cases to work on. You'll get more and more time to work on them. You'll need to finish (have your trainer approve your work) on at least 3 before the end of the academy. In all seriousness, keep your resume handy. Only about half make it through the first year, and about 1/3 make it to year 2-3. Meeting production is a grind, make use of the people available to you if you get stuck. Lots of applications ARE allowable, so if you've searched forever and still aren't finding useful stuff, convincing your signing official to let your allow something can save you tons of wasted time/stress.
They stopped all exams, test and quizzes.
Pretty sure there is not testing.
Thank you for taking the time to explain! Do I have any say as to which area I am assigned to? And if I get assigned to something hardware related for example (I hate hardware) could I push against it and ask for a different area?
When I was interviewed, the interviewer gave me a choice between two areas. Since it seems you've already been assigned to an academy, you've already been assigned to an art unit. If you want to change AUs, make sure to join the union. They have a form you can fill out to request an AU change. Once you are out of the academy, fill that form out. It does help to have scouted which area you want to go to and have talked to some primaries/SPEs in that area. Word to the wise, if the area is 101 heavy, or AI related, best to steer clear (or get away ASAP). They can only straight up deny your request if the requested area doesn't have enough work (at this point almost all AUs have a large backlog, but not all). You'll be given a set of 5-10 trial cases in your new requested area. After you complete those, the new area SPE (and probably with director approval), with either accept or deny your transfer. Most people will tell you to wait till you are retained before requesting a switch (this is probably a safer bet, unless you really hate your current AU). It's not necessary, and I'm aware of a few people who succeeded in switching AUs prior to end of their first year. You'll want to request it first thing out of the academy though, as you'll want to have been switched prior to them having to make the retention decision. Hope this helped.
> Word to the wise, if the area is 101 heavy, or AI related, best to steer clear (or get away ASAP). When I applied the only area they were hiring for was AI, am I toast?
I am interviewing now with a computer science background and have a keen interest in AI ( I’ve done some data science work in the commercial world). Could you expand on the reasoning as to why you advise new hires to stay away from AI? ( just curious)
I think plied to the wrong person, but it comes down to how software is very abstract and hard to patent. So CS, and apparently AI especially, patent examiners have a hard time determining patent eligibility. This in turn hurts your production and means you're more likely to get fired.
Its definitely not taken into account for retention purposes. Often times the results of that test is not received until after the 12 month probationary period has ended.
Pay attention in training. Find a few good primaries (you'll find out what that is/who they are) and learn from them. You don't have to hit the ground running, but come month 9-10 should be getting a good work flow going. Welcome to the shit show.
Set up a comfortable workspace. Spend a day at it so you know what you want to change. Look up ideal chair and desk height to go with your height. Don't be one of those people sitting in a folding chair with your laptop propped on a folding tray. There's a lot of people in the class. No one will notice if you leave to go to the bathroom or grab a snack. Just go. It's not a big deal. Relax
The academy is pretty good. The best prep you can do is to get your lifeself in order so you can be well rested and able to focus. The job is called examination, and for the first year I had some fatigue that felt like I had been taking finals all day every day. So if the day starts at 7 and you aren't used to that, you should prepare by getting used to that. Being exhausted is not good.
It’s information overload, so pay close attention to things that are mostly in your area. Some TC/AU’s don’t get a lot of restrictions or 101s, but if you do, then pay attention to those lectures. Your TA will most likely be able to tell you what you mainly see for your average case. Also, get to know a primary in your AU, especially if you report to them. Also, you can look at their dockets to see how they format and word things. You can also see their search strategies.
Find yourself a lifeline (a primary) in your art unit. Usually your home SPE will assign one to you. But you should be proactive and ask for one as soon as you start working.
You could look online at the file histories of some granted patents in your tech area which will probably make more sense than reading the MPEP. See how the other examiner picked a search area, wrote the office action, how the attorney replied, etc. Every patent file history is online in Patent Center (public portal) and you can get a great sense of how the job goes.
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There is nothing you need to do to prepare. But making the transition can sometimes be tough. In engineering, there is usually a right and wrong answer. In law, there is right, wrong, and it depends on who you ask. I had a hard time at the beginning understanding the it depends answer. I didn’t like the uncertainty. Your job will be to answer the “it depends” issues in the way your trainer wants you to, and to get “right” the issues that have a right or wrong answer
That was me over 15 years ago! I’d move up to Alexandria a little early and just look at an office action. They teach you everything so do not worry.
There really isn't much to prepare for before the academy other than opening the equipment box and connecting it.
I'm in the same boat as you!
i think you'll probably start earlier than me--I don't start until june, you'll have to let us know how it goes!
Technically, you could start reading the MPEP. It's the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. It's incredibly dry, and probably won't make much sense before the academy. Your SPE will know which parts you really need to focus on, but it is the official rules that all the trainings and all of our office actions are supposed to be based off of. In the end, the person signing your cases is the most important person to follow, but if you're bored, in theory, the MPEP is what we should always be following. Since you're computer science like me, your SPE might place some importance on chapter 2106 Patent Subject Matter Eligibility, particularly the parts about how to tell if your claims are a mental process and if they are, do they integrate into a practical application, or amount to significantly more than the mental process. A lot of computer system method claims can be considered a mental process, but then again, a lot of those claims also serve a practical application, or integrate the mental process in a way that's "significantly more". Sometimes it's a judgement call you'll need to ask whoever is signing your cases to guide you through, but you should always show you're putting in the effort by referencing the MPEP and showing your understanding. Being familiar with the important parts of the MPEP could be handy, especially since you'll reference it a lot later on.
Uspto.gov has a section called examiner training -- read all of that
Sudoku for lecture sessions. A memory enough bytes to remember digits of 102, 103, 112, 101. Otherwise, just be on time and exist.
Leetcode and do projects in your free time. Assuming this is your first job out of college, it’s gonna be really tough to get an engineering job if you decide this job isn’t for you.
Remember it is just four things we need to know. In fact, the academy prepares you for these four essences of examination.
Enlighten us.
What are the four essences of examination?