Patent Law

You Have a Buddy in the Patent Business

By Stephen Albainy-Jenei

Joseph Scott, President of Patent Buddy, contacted me about their site.  Listed as “Where IP Professionals meet to gather & exchange information,” it is a new service that provides data (obtained from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office) on registered patent attorneys and their employment histories since 2001.

It claims to have data on 39,259 attorneys from 13,081 organizations. You can search by name, registration #, organization, and geographic location.

If you join as a member, Patent Buddy enables you to create a professional profile in which you can list your qualifications and list patents that you have successfully prosecuted. You can even link directly to the patents so that prospective clients or other law firms can review your work.

The Opportunities feature enables you to stay on top of actual and possible patent job openings in your area. For example, Patent Buddy notifies you when a patent lawyer leaves a firm. By acting quickly, you could apply for that vacated position before the firm begins seeking a replacement.

If you’re a patent attorney voyeur, you can receive weekly updates on attorneys and agents joining and leaving organizations in your area.  You can use a similar feature to keep track of the activity of competing firms ? who they hire, which patents they file, etc.  Apparently, you can receive email notices from Patent Buddy showing when and how frequently people have accessed your profile.

The site ranks each organization by growth and experience (little stars).  One interesting feature is a tab that lists previous employees and see where they are up to.  Patent Buddy also provides a career news blog and job posting board. You can search for jobs by location, specialization, education, experience, and job type.

One note of caution, the information isn’t necessarily up-to-date or accurate (as noted by others, too).  In looking at my firms’ listing, I noted that:

• it listed an attorney who left the firm years ago;
• it did not list some attorneys and agents
• it did not list many of our previous employees; and
• it had mistakes in my profile.

You can join for free, but you must have a USPTO registration number. Learn more about Patent Buddy.  Use at your own risk.

Full post as published by Patent Baristas on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).