Re: An IP gripe

On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Jerald Gnuschke <jerald.gnuschke[_at_]nokia.com> wrote:
>
> A technical DEGREE is not required but a technical background is. You
> might be able to satisfy the PTO's education requirements by proving
> you've passed a sufficient number of technical courses or by proving

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You misspelled "and". Except for very limited purposes, the OED does not accept work experience as a substitute for approved coursework. You'd still have to take a metric buttload of accredited courses, although for a very few of them, you might be able to substitute actual experience.

One reason I'm not a patent lawyer is that my CS degree predates the PTO's recognition of CS as a technical degree,[1] and I'm unwilling to go back to school for a third to get a degree I don't care about or to study subjects that don't interest me, just to qualify to take a test. The OED gave zero weight to my 12-year career in the computer industry, including my position as Senior Computer Architect at a major mainframe computer company.

In contrast, an acquaintance of mine has a degree in Operations Research. Because the degree is administered from the College of Engineering at her institute, and awarded as an engineering degree, she qualified for the patent exam. The curriculum is mostly applied mathematics, and while I don't take anything away from its level of difficulty, it is less technical than, say, a degree in mathematics (which I believe also does not qualify for the patent bar, last I checked).

This isn't as gripy as it sounds. I can appreciate that the CS curricula are pretty inconsistent among various universities, and that it would be possible to get a CS degree without really gaining any true technical knowledge. But the bottom line is that the PTO is looking for techinal education rather than technical competence, presumably because, from a bureaucratic point of view, it's easier to measure, and there's value in having bright-line tests like this, even if it excludes some qualified people from practice, if it also excludes more unqualified people.

(I should also note that the OED recognizes passing the state engineering exam as an alternate qualification to take the exam.)

[1] The PTO's recognition of the CS degree is still rather limited. A CS degree from many universities well-known for their outstanding technical programs do not qualify. Last time I checked, Carnegie-Mellon, MIT and CalTech did not qualify.

-- 
Terry Carroll         |
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