Online Aid for Patent Exam
Aspiring patent attorneys now have an online source to review for the patent bar exam. The review course—as well as information and programs for practicing intellectual property attorneys—is part of the Aspen Patent Authority, published by Wolters Kluwer’s Aspen Publishers unit.
“We decided to expand to the patent bar market because we didn’t find anything out there like what we wanted to do,” says Jessica Keeney, Aspen’s program manager.
Keeney describes Aspen’s program as an online alternative that comes with about 30 hours of video, four print volumes, an interactive blog and exam-taking tips from author Jim Longacre. Keeney says the $1,495 price tag is about half the price of other patent exam review courses.
The patent bar exam, administered most business days at testing centers throughout the country, has gained popularity in recent years. Keeney says the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office administered about 2,750 exams in 2005. They reached a high of 3,525 in 2008, then tapered back to 3,493 last year, according to the PTO.
“For those with an engineering degree, the patent bar is a differentiator,” says Keeney.
Keeney says Longacre wrote more than 1,000 practice questions for the review course, which will come in handy because the PTO stopped releasing sample questions in 2003.
