Turtles all the way down

Today I took the patent agent registration exam, aka, the Patent Bar.

I passed, so now I can practice in front of the US Patent and Trademark Office, and represent clients just like an attorney. Except that I’m not an attorney. Yet. I’m just an agent.

The patent bar is hard. The pass rate is typically around 50%, whereas the pass rate for the Illinois Bar Exam is about 85%.

Various people have told me that you need to spend between 150 and 400 hours preparing for the exam. I spent about 80-90, but my 10+ years of working with patents on the client side of the fence may have given me a head start.

Like too many law-related exams, the patent bar is all about speed. You have six hours to answer 100 questions, and you’ll probably need all of it. The best way to study is to take a broad overview course, then to take as many practice exams as possible.

I took the PLI self-study course, then did exam drills and focused studying with Bullseye. I found the PLI course to be a good general overview, and their Patware CD to be a great way of taking practice exams, but the Bullseye course had a nice set of “frequently asked questions” and a solid outline.

In any case, the exam covers the entire Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP), a 3000-page monstrosity that includes all of the applicable patent laws, regulations, treaties, along with summaries of case, law, examples, and so on. The exam asks questions from just about everywhere in the MPEP. Although the exam is open book (you have a searchable PDF version of the MPEP on your exam computer), the tight time frame coupled with complicated fact patterns in questions makes it so that you don’t have enough time to look everything up.

Since questions are repeated from exam to exam, you need to memorize about 50 or so of the most commonly-asked questions in the hope that about 15-20 will show up on your exam. By having these questions down cold, you’ll buy yourself some time to look up answers to the rest.

Does the patent bar actually test your ability to be a good practitioner? Yes and no. Prosecuting patents is mostly about claim drafting, writing a good supporting description and arguing with the Patent Office. Knowing the matter tested by the MPEP is valuable, but is only part of the requisite knowledge. Perhaps these other topics are too hard to test.

I’m both surprised and relieved to have passed. The surprise is due to the fact that the exam was hard and at the end I wasn’t sure I had made it. And of course the relief is because I won’t have to sit through it again. Ever.

So we’re having another financial crisis. It appears to be somewhere between a minor radar blip and a complete meltdown ala the Great Depression.

It seems that while these sorts of crises are happening, the general public, and perhaps those intimately involved, have no clue what is going on until it is too late (think Enron).

However, after the fact, with 20/20 hindsight, someone will always write a book with an analysis showing a series of events that led to the crisis, and how the facts were right in front of us but we ignored them anyway.

Was in Ottawa last week. After arriving in the airport I had to stand in line at customs. I was near the end of a one-hundred person long line and there were only two customs officers checking us. After 45 minutes, they added a third officer. Eventually I got through.

Apparently I barely squeaked by another customs barrier. The Ottawa airport customs officials are pulling aside people coming from the US and trying to get $150 out of them for a “work permit.” In order to avoid this, you need to be able to argue that you are not going to work for a Canadian company during your stay.

A couple of my fellow travelers were taken into “the room” for an hour while the custom’s people trying to get the $150 from them. Eventually my friends were released. They spoke of their experience as resembling a shake-down.

I sincerely hope that the Ottawa customs people are not working on commission.

From the New York Times:

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The elevator algorithm is the not-so-well-known method of choosing which floor that an elevator stops on next. The elevator algorithm is also used for hard drive head movement, but that application is probably not relevant to this discussion.

In a nutshell, an elevator will continue to go in the direction it is currently headed, up or down, until it is either empty or has reached the bottom or top floor, respectively. Along the way it will stop at any floor to let people off or on.

The latter, stopping to let people on, can be a problem. Say you’re at the tenth floor of a ten story building. You and about eight more people get into an elevator and you’re all headed for the ground floor. The elevator is very full and not one more person could possibly squeeze in. However, on your way down, it stops several times at floors where people want to get on, but when seeing that the elevator is already crowded, decide to wait for the next one.

So here’s the improvement - the elevator should continuously measure the aggregate weight of all of the people on it. If the amount is greater than some threshold, say 2000 pounds, it will assume that it is full and not stop at intermediate floors to let people on. However it will stop to let people off. And if enough people get off to reduce the aggregate weight of the remaining people to less than the threshold, the elevator will begin to let people on again. This way, the process of getting from one point to another should be faster for everyone.

Now that Spring Break is starting, I have a few (very few) minutes to reflect on the admittedly insane lifestyle I’ve adopted over the last six or so months.

I’m working full time, going to law school at night, and of course there is the family. If anyone is considering going back to school and will find themselves in a similar situation, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that it is doable. The bad news is that it isn’t easy and you’ll have to sacrifice some, if not all, of the things you do for fun.

Monday through Thursday I’m out of the house by 7:30am or so and heading to the train. I’ll get into the office by 8:30-9am. Depending on my workload, I’ll put in anywhere from 2 to 8 hours of work. I probably average around 4-5 a day, but there’s a lot of variability behind that mean.

Usually between 3pm and 6pm I head over to school for anywhere from 1 to 4 hours of class. I’ll typically pick up dinner to go at the local Starbucks or at the school’s cafe.

Then I’m on the train home to get back to my house anywhere from 9pm to 11pm. I try to use my train time for reading. In law school there is always more reading to do.

On Fridays I work a “normal” day, sometimes from home.

Saturdays and Sundays are for family, the gym, working around the house, and two very important tasks: outlining and reading for the following week’s classes. Outlining nails down the concepts from the previous week’s lectures and reading, while reading allows me to catch up or get ahead.

There is not a ton of slack in my schedule. All it takes is a couple of unexpected events and I’m falling behind. Sick kids, a sick wife, parent-teacher conferences, care meetings for my mom, a meeting with my accountant, and so on will do it.

But the school / work combo is doable. And hopefully will be worth it.

Now that we’re on Spring break I’ve trying to remember what normal people do on their weekends. I think it has something to do with this thing called “fun” but after seven intense weeks of law school, I’m struggling with that concept.

I think this is original…

Software is like sausage. You really don’t want to see how it is made.

I’m still enough of a math geek to remember that today is Pi Day. However after the last couple of weeks, I’m ready to say Happy 4/20.

I have to wonder why the investment in gas pump entertainment. I don’t really have a desire to watch a video / newsreel / weather report while I gas up my car. Probably some stations think they can make licensing or advertising cash this way.

The first rule of gas station choice is convenience. The second is price. And that’s a far second since most stations in any given area are typically close in price. Another factor is if I want a car wash along with my fill-up.

Entertainment is not a reason why I’d ever choose one gas station over another.