Case studies : Patent examiner: Thomas Britland

After graduating with an MSc in Physics, Tom applied to more than 30 graduate schemes. He then applied for a job at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and was successful...

My degree subject was very relevant to securing my current job. My dissertation was on semiconductor thin films and within eight months of starting I was working on semiconductor cases (computer chips, LEDs, organic electronics). A technical science, engineering or mathematics degree is absolutely essential to doing the day-to-day job.

I get in to work when I can drag myself out of bed (we work on flexi, so don't have dedicated hours). The basic job is pretty repetitive - open a case; read it; understand it (preferably); identify areas of the patent database to search; perform various strategies to narrow millions of documents to a few hundred; compare the cases you have; and write a report about how similar it is.

However, that is assuming you don't work on extra projects. I work on patent examiner recruitment as an extra project, which means I am sometimes in meetings discussing advertising, vacancy numbers, training and interviews. Beyond that I also spent a lot of time last year putting together adverts, negotiating different advertising schemes with websites and going to careers fairs. And that is just one project I happen to do!

You start the job with four weeks' training, mostly in the form of lectures and seminars (carried out on site). They teach you the basic law skills you need to do the job, how to use the various systems and give you general background to intellectual property and the office as a whole. After that you are taken to your desk and start the job! For the first few years you have a revising officer who will check all your work and generally train you towards being “independently proficient”. Once you are deemed independently proficient (about 3 years) you can go for non-competitive promotion from associate patent examiner to patent examiner.

After a few months you can start working on projects of varying size and possibly go for temporary secondments to other parts of the office. This is encouraged as the office likes to develop you in different ways, not just as a patent processing machine.

At the moment I am looking to continue working on patent casework with a view to getting my work to senior examiner level (in terms of quality, output and line management experience). Then I'd like to go on a secondment to International Policy, which is a section of the office devoted to negotiating treaties and agreements with other countries regarding all kinds of IP (patents, copyright, design, trademarks).

I enjoy seeing new technologies and things I know will be in TVs and smartphones in a few years. The flexi time and job security are also great. While we are civil service we are frontline and part of a trading fund (we make our own money), so there are absolutely no worries about cuts.

The most challenging part is getting cases which are broad and unclear. It makes the job a challenge as they are difficult to search. Surprisingly the more specific, advanced or complex a case is, the easier they are to do!

I'd advise any student or graduate with an interest in this career to keep an eye out and apply when we're recruiting! If you have a 2:2 or greater in a science or engineering degree then you probably have the minimum requirements to start.