Explain why you decided to pursue a career in this profession.
Mine is quite a standard story in this profession; I had not particularly enjoyed the laboratory environment I experienced at university and felt my skill set lay outside of the lab, but still within the life sciences. I had been exposed to patents during an internship in a biotech company and, after some more independent research, found that the career of a patent attorney appealed to me.
What I enjoy about this career is that you are constantly intellectually stimulated, while providing a service necessary for the protection and continuation of innovation.
Give a bit of background of your qualifications and any training you have completed.
After graduating from Durham University with a BSc in Biological Sciences, I joined Sagittarius IP in November 2023 as a trainee patent attorney in the Cambridge office. I am currently part-qualified, having recently completed the Intellectual Property Law PGCert at Queen Mary University of London, and being in the first cohort to sit (and pass) the foundation module of the reformed EQEs. While the exams form an integral part of the qualification process, your day-to-day tasks are more reflective of the actual practice of an attorney and provide you with exposure to the tasks that exams are unable to test, such as good client and deadline management.
Explain what your current role involves.
The work is varied in both the area of technology and the type of task. One morning you may be working on a response to a communication from a patent office regarding cell reprogramming, and the same afternoon you could be helping conduct a freedom to operate search on an antibody. Sagittarius IP excels at involving trainees in all areas of work, including opposition and appeal hearings, one of which I was able to attend in Munich during my first year of training. However, the highest volume of work does tend to be prosecution-based, i.e. getting a patent application to grant, which involves liaising with the client and the relevant patent office. You have to be aware of the prior art, the prosecution history (if any yet) and the client’s interests to develop a strategy for the best way forward. Each communication is also a good chance to revisit relevant articles, rules, guidelines, and/or case law, both to refresh your knowledge and to help bolster or support your arguments. Attorneys at Sagittarius IP are very good at providing detailed feedback on any completed work, which provides further learning opportunities and helps identify areas for improvement.
Do you have any advice for anyone wanting to enter the profession?
Patent law bridges science, law and business, so make sure you give attention to all three in your application. Make sure that your application documents are proofread multiple times by yourself and ideally somebody else – when you spend a long time on something it is easier to miss small errors, but the hiring team will not!
Because competition is so high, persistence is key. You should not take rejections personally but rather ask for feedback on how to improve and, if given, incorporate this into your next application.
Becoming a patent attorney is a demanding process that requires hard work and dedication over multiple years, so make sure you are in a firm that has good exam support. Sagittarius IP is very hands on with exam preparation, offering in-house tutorials and external courses to set you up in the best way possible for exam success.
