Often overlooked as a scientific field, third-year law student Erin Bies describes patent law as “the place where science and law intersect.”
“I always knew I wanted to work in patent law because it meant two things: interacting with new science, and being a part of the adversarial process of securing a patent for a new idea or invention. I’m a debater at heart, and the fight is fun!”
Despite the fight, Bies notes that her experiences in the IP field have been largely welcoming, especially as a young female attorney.
“The more experienced patent attorneys are happy to work with younger, up-and-coming lawyers and it’s a wonderful space and environment to work in.”
Within the law school, Bies has a wealth of knowledge to draw on from faculty member Betsy Rosenblatt, associate director of the Spangenberg Center for Law, Technology and the Arts. After taking her Copyrights and Trademarks course, Bies prepared her law school note on a patent-related topic.
“Professor Rosenblatt had actually met and worked with several of the authors I was citing, so she helped me engage with the material on a really deep level,” Bies said.
IP law offers two separate tracks for practicing attorneys: patent preparation and prosecution, or patent litigation. Preparation and prosecution requires the passage of a separate bar examination, and students are only permitted to take the test if they have a scientific education in a specified list of science and engineering degrees.
With an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Hillsdale College, Bies is able to follow either path to practicing patent law, and passed the patent bar last summer.
“I’m learning as much as I can about patent preparation and prosecution while I’m in school, because I’d like to practice patent litigation in the future,” she says. “Litigation is all about enforcing the patent in court, but in order to enforce it well, you have to have a really deep understanding of the patent application process. You have to know why the application was written in a certain way in order to defend it.”
Throughout her time in law school, Bies has completed two internships in the Cleveland area, the first at a patent prosecution firm and the second at a larger law firm with a robust intellectual property (IP) department.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work on a variety of technologies,” she explains. “The cool thing about patents is that every time you start a new project, you do a deep dive into how the machine or invention works. You have to know all of those details to write the patent application and protect the invention, so you become a specialist in a new area of technology for every project you work on.”
Bies has also worked in the IP Venture Clinic at the law school, writing patent applications for others in the CWRU community, helping them secure their idea. With an approved patent, her clients can take what they’ve invented and raise money without the fear that someone will rip off their idea. This
“It’s such a positive area of law where your clients are creating new things, building brands or making discoveries,” Bies says. “They’re almost always happy to talk to you since you’re the one protecting their work.”