I’ll be soon switching from employment lit to patent lit as a 4th year. I have no experience with patents. Can folks in the field please recommend some resources to learn about the type of work a 4th year (and beyond) is expected to be doing?

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Why and how are you doing this? Honestly seems like a terrible idea/that your are setting yourself up for failure starting as a 4th year given you have never touched invalidity/infringement contentions and have never written expert reports for a patent case or dealt with claim construction. Patent lit has a ton that is unique to it. Patent litigators can generalize fairly easily but a generalist doing patent lit usually doesn't work well. Honestly you are probably setting yourself up for failure unless you take a class hit

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@A6... nope... doesn't sound like you are a patent litigator. Funny how firms hire people with specific tech backgrounds to deal with the stuff despite it "being no different than anything else." Patent lit is vastly different. Many cases outside of it don't even involve expert reports/who knows how many OP has seen in employment lit. Outside of patent lit the likelihood of experts writing their own reports is also higher... and reports typically aren't as monstrous (have seen multiple reports in the 1000s of pages).

Patent lit is also unusual for many other reasons I haven't mentioned. To name a few:

1. Federal only

2. Many patent lit teams also typically deal with the appeals level litigation which is usually handled by special appellate groups outside of patent lit

3. Potential ITC stuff

4. Possible concurrent PTAB litigation

5. Odds of getting to trial/average settlement timelines.

6. Depo frequency and extent of expert involvement

Etc

Further, you are kinda proving my point... you shouldn't need guidance for something like contentions and claim construction as a 4th year. At that point you should you should be able to take a pretty major leadership role in something like contentions. The fact that you need guidance on basically the fundamentals of patent lit is a sign you should be billing at junior rates...

Don’t listen to the naysayers. Lawyers are some of the most boring, traditional, unimaginative and miserable people you can find. They think just because you did something for 3 years you should have to continue it for the rest of your 35+ year career then complain about how miserable you are constantly. Yet, most of these posters here constantly post about how they hate their lives and feel empty inside. Don’t take advice from this bowl. I asked a similar question on Reddit about a year ago about lateraling from a tiny small town law firm doing small dollar litigation to big law doing deals. They all told me it couldn’t be done. Had I listened to them, I’d still be in that tiny town instead of working on $1 billion deals. I can’t help you with resources, but ignore the negativity and noise. They have no creativity and can’t imagine any other path than the path someone told them to follow (which they followed and are miserable for it because they refuse to get off the path though it isn’t working for them). Good luck, and you’re going to do just great! Don’t be afraid to try new things and to make mistakes

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Lol A3... we are giving practical advice on how to succeed long term, not spreading negativity. Starting as a 4th year and failing miserably/getting kicked out of Biglaw is a far worse outcome than taking a class year hit to a second year and going the distance... but continue to make over optimistic/non-practical feel good statements that help no one.

As an illustrative example of what you are encouraging, you are doing something akin to telling an internal medicine specialist to perform open heart surgery because he should pave his own path and believe in himself despite having 0 experience. In medicine that would definitely be malpractice.... law can get away with it but it is pretty ridiculous and if I were a client I would be fuming about getting a 4th year billing rate for someone with 0 patent lit experience

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A quick way to make yourself indispensable on patent cases is to learn the state of the law on damages. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge but it is unique, nuanced, complicated, and always contested in large cases, so kind of a natural ramp into the field for a different kind of litigator. Read the many law review articles on unanswered questions from Federal Circuit’s damages cases from the past decade and you’ll get a good baseline. Look at the recent patent cases wherever you think you’ll be practicing and read the damages expert Daubert motions as well. Also see if your firm will reimburse for the PLI patent bar course, which is good for a foundation, but is expensive. I don’t think it’s possible to jump into any specialized field as a mid-level (i.e. doing 4th year tasks) without background, and patent law is about as specialized as it gets. Hence all the angry patent associates above justifying our salaries. But if you work on damages and focus on the common elements with general litigation like managing discovery and trial practice, you’ll be an immediate value add while your figure out the technical stuff.

likehelpfulsmart

Honestly was sort of thinking damages would be easier/a good place, but the issue with damages is that whether or not you can do it at all will depend a great deal on staffing. If you are staffed too early on a case, damages is not at all a focus. Damages experts are more likely to write there own reports too which massively decreases the amount of work that needs to be done there. This probably is the most viable option if you can control staffing enough to make it viable thoigh

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Man…A1 is on a mission 😂

I’m in patent lit and I would recommend looking at a sample court’s docket control order/scheduling order. I usually work in TX, so these are the names of orders I’m familiar with. From there, look at deadlines you’re unfamiliar with. These are going to most likely be contentions, claim construction, markman hearing, prior art elections, infringement/non-infringement/validity/invalidity expert reports, daubert motions, etc. Then, look at samples and articles on these. Good luck!

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DCO is EDTX. In Albright's Court know the OGP backwards and forwards. There are no local patent rules in WDTX so the OGP is your guide.

In terms of resources that are good to stay on too of developments (and learn interesting tidbits along the way), try patentlyo (leans slightly pro defendant) and ipwatchdog (leans slightly pro patent owner) blogs. Also your firm should subscribe to Docket Navigator. Have them add you to the subscription to get the daily email. It is also an awesome research tool to supplement westlaw

likehelpful

Even if you don’t take the patent bar, check out the PLI course for the patent bar. It has some useful sections that will introduce you to the basics of patent law, the anatomy of a patent, and proceedings before the PTAB.

likehelpful

I second the above, there are a ton of quirks about patent pit that other never touch. Invalidity/infringement contentions, weird expansive local rules, IPR practice, just to name a few.

For case law I can recommend Matthews. Its a pretty good starting point secondary reference. As for everything else, Im really not sure. Studying for and taking the patent bar wouldn't be a bad step.

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Become very familiar with the MPEP and patent procedure

likehelpful

Nope just lit.

Have you passed the patent bar? Do you have an offer? Where are you in the process?

Yeah the patent bar isn't really useful for district court lit but helps with the weird procedure of IPRs which depending on your firms practice/the client could go hand in hand with every district court lit.

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