How to create greater gender diversity at the US patent bar
There are some key issues with the US patent bar and its qualifications process. The fundamental problem is that the qualifications for demonstrating sufficient scientific and technical qualifications are quite narrow, too rigid, and not in tune with today’s technologies.
According to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), its regulations provide that practitioners “demonstrate possession of scientific and technical qualifications” to register for the patent bar exam.
Candidates can demonstrate qualifications in three ways:
- Possessing one of 32 specific bachelor’s degrees (category A).
- Proving that they have taken sufficient semester hours in physics, chemistry, biology, botany, microbiology, molecular biology, or engineering, if they have non-listed bachelor’s degrees, (category B).
- Relying on practical engineering or scientific experience or passing the Fundamentals of Engineering test (category C).
A personal insight
As a personal example, a large part of my practice is advising clients whose products and services are in fields such as encryption, data security, and artificial intelligence and are frequently implemented with software and cloud-based architectures.
I came to law with a BSc and an MSc in mathematics with a computer science concentration, and more than 12 years of prior work experience as a programmer and cryptologic mathematician. Even though many inventions today are computer-implemented and involve complex mathematics, a degree in math is still not automatically recognised as acceptable under category A.
