New Patent Bar Online Exam - Prometric

[Tom]

Has anyone heard recently about how long it takes to find out computer test results?  Last I heard was a few months ago that it took about 10 weeks.

[Waiting]

I called the USPTO a couple of weeks ago and they told me 6-8 weeks

[Waiting2]

When I finished the exam the screen said I would get results in 6 weeks, but after 6 weeks I called and they said "8 weeks". Not sure there is an upper bound  

Names of a big bunch of people who passed were posted to the OED website at the beginning of October, but since then only a few names so I'm guessing that they are accumulating a "statistically significant sample" before handing out more results.

[samterm]

When I finished the exam the screen said I would get results in 6 weeks, but after 6 weeks I called and they said "8 weeks". Not sure there is an upper bound  

Names of a big bunch of people who passed were posted to the OED website at the beginning of October, but since then only a few names so I'm guessing that they are accumulating a "statistically significant sample" before handing out more results.

Are you sure it said 6 weeks ? I took it on 11/23/04 and it said "Your results will sent directly to you from the USPTO in due time." When did you take the exam ? I wonder why we both got different messages in the end.

[Bibi]

Hi:
I was studying for the exam and in the mean time got laid off. This coming month, since there's not much hiring, I would try my best to put in as much as possible and appear for the exam early jan. I plan to study about 6 hrs everyday. Guys, I need your input to help me do my best.

I have kayton material from 2001, but I have a feeling this should be good enough. I do not have the exam taking program from kayton's course that lot of people talk about, but do have something called PTO exam simulator from some other company that randomly selects 50 Qs from old exams and tests. Problem is, I can't search MPEP at the same time. Right now, I am hoping that I can get 70 Qs right from my knowledge and don't have to depend too much on MPEP search. Once I am a little more prepapred, I can start learning MPEP look up. The reason being, I wonder how much time, I'll have left for looking up. Kayton's course has about 1600 Qs (including repeats). Any idea, how much one can be prepapred after finishing all the 1600 Qs? After I am done with all the Qs, I plan to revise the lecture notes that briefly gives all the contents by MPEP chapter. What else should I study? I don't think I'll have time to study the treatise, anyway.

Also, I was filling out the exam application form and got confused with the exam fee. How much do we pay with the application, and how much later to prometric? How long does it take to get approval for the examonce we apply. I am planning to apply ASAP so that by March I'll be done (incase for some reason my Jan plans don't work out).

Now for some input from the past test takers. I hear you telling 20-30 repeats. Does it mean, these are verbatim repeats from previous exams? Are the others completely foreign Qs to you? or are the story or fact patterns basically familiar to you?
So much for now. Back to my practice Qs.

Thanks for your inputs in advance.

[Isaac]

Using old patent material has some risks.  Patent law does
change on a pretty regular basis.  In fact Congress just
made some changes to 35 USC 103 in the last week or so.

Post 2000 materials is mostly okay, but there are some pitfalls.
I would supplement the material by getting ahold of the
copies of the last patent bar exams.

Your study should be organized closely around the MPEP.  You should
be able to locate the answers to any questions you miss while doing
old exams in the MPEP.  If you do that, you will gain enough
familiarity with the book to look up question.

[E. Alpert]

I have Kayton material from 2004 some of which I would like to sell (including the questions CD-ROM which I think is very important for practicing). If you are in the NY area we can also arrange pick up. Feel free to contact me at e2alpert@aol.com

[Waiting2]

Are you sure it said 6 weeks ? I took it on 11/23/04 and it said "Your results will sent directly to you from the USPTO in due time." When did you take the exam ? I wonder why we both got different messages in the end.

Its apparent that they have changed their SW at least once since the initial distribution, since people are now reporting different types of questions (see early posts to this list).

I took the exam at the beginning of October.

Actually, the PTO at one time promised steady improvement in feedback time to 2 weeks (or even less). However. they did not say how long it would take to reach that goal  .

It is not necesarily a bad thing to wait longer, since the longer they delay, the better chance that they will throw out some bad questions. However, it does take a toll on your nerves.

[Janthkin]

When I finished the exam the screen said I would get results in 6 weeks, but after 6 weeks I called and they said "8 weeks". Not sure there is an upper bound  

Similar experience here - I took the exam the first week of October, was told 4 weeks, then called and was told 6, then called and was told 8, then called today was told "it could be 9, or even longer".  

I'm extremely annoyed - it's 100 multiple choice questions, done on a computer!  Many of us could WRITE software that would grade these things.  If they're trying to collect statistically significant numbers of results to screen questions, then they should at least be up front about that.  As is, it's taking them longer to grade the COMPUTER tests than it did to grade the written tests the last several times they offered those.

[Jonathan]

When the computer-based exam was first rolled out, wasn't it a goal to provide instant results and perhaps even a 'you have answered a sufficient number of questions to pass, do not bother completing the rest of the exam' feature?

I think both of those features have been available for medical board exams for quite awhile. Seems a little silly that the OED and Prometric can't do the same.

[James Italia]

Took the exam Nov. 27th.  I experienced no problems with the software and the location was great (Prometric Glendale).  Here are my observations...

First some background.  I used the Kayton (PRG) Video materials from 2002.  I did not use the treatise and instead would watch the videos and go through the two volumes of materials that accompanied the videos.  I would make my own notecards for each chapter and then complete the chapter associated questions and make notecards on key pioints or missed questions.   Once I was through ALL the materials I had about 300 notecards (4x6) that were pretty much full using rather small handwriting.  

I knew there had been some changes since the 2002 materials were published so I checked the PTO website and updated those areas (ex. PCT practice, 102(e) etc.).

Once I had gone through everything once, I relied soley on my notecards.  After going through them a couple times I took the 9 computer based exams (Nov. 1999 to Oct. 2003)(see link in this thread for site).  After each exam I would again make notecards for each individual exam noting the same items as I mentioned above. My average score for all the exams was 86% (with no score under 80% and no score above 90%).  I think talking all these exams and making sure you understand the answers is key and so is the experience you gain by using the MPEP in electronic form to look up questions. When taking the practice tests, in particular with the more recent exams, I could get through the 50 questions in about and hour, marking about a 15 questions to check later in the MPEP.  I finished the practice exams about 5 days before the actual exam, I spent the next days reviewing all my cards and going through all the exams once more.

Now to the Exam...
Using this same technique with the actual exam, again I got through the 50 questions in about an hour and was left with about 20 questions to look up in the first part and about 15 to look up in the second part.  I marked more in the actual exam because I was being more careful than I was in the practice exams.  

I would say that of the 100 total questions about 25 were verbatim from old exams.  Another 50 were pretty straight foward if you knew the basics really well.  About 12 required you to look up in the MPEP to get the minutiae details. The remaining 13 questions were what I would describe as a little obscure, and would take some time and effort to find the answers.  And of those 13, I would say that I didn't find the definitive answer in the MPEP for about half of them.   So that left me with about 6 questions that I had to make an educated guess on and thankfully it was usually a 50/50 proposition.

I would say that I studied A LOT and that it paid off.   My overall impression is that the exam was fair and completely passable, but it did have a different feel to it when compared to the previous exams.  Definitely not as comfortable and I would say more difficult to degree than the others.  It left me with the impression that somebody "new" got their hands on this exam during its preparation. Some of the questions that dealt with simple material were skewed a little.  And with the PCT/102(e) questions, most of them for some reason were Pre-AIPA so that made them more difficult.

Well there you have it.  Let this be a thank you to the board for all the insight it provided me in my preparation.  I will post my results once I recieve them, i.e. whenever "due time" is.
  

[Gordon Morrison]

I called OED and was told that "there were no results, until they have results, when they have results, the results will then be mailed".  I took the exam on Oct 4th looking forward to getting my results.  Clearly this is an improvement over the paper system.

[Guest]

I hope you're kidding.  This is definitely not an improvement over the paper exam!  The exam is harder, the online MPEP is faulty and it is taking longer to get the results.  Although I do agree with Waiting 2 that the longer they take to compile the results, the more likely they are to throw out bad questions (and there were plenty).

[ChiTownBob]

I took it Nov. 15.  Since I was so keyed up afterwards, and I wanted to send my recollection to the Kayten folks, I wrote down EVERYTHING I could recall.   So this is a long post, most of which is of the form "<area>:  as many questions as I could remember."  (in fact, my original message was rejected for being too long)

With respect to content, I think there were a great many obscure and "tricky" questions, whose motivation seems nothing more than "OK, we'll assume you know all about X, and Y, and Z, and what happens if you have X but your Y is defective.  But what if Z is also missing and you also have the W element in there, and the W was submitted twice but the second time was done using improper mailing procedures?"   In other words, they're designed not to test your knowledge of the law but to see if you can be tripped up.   It is fair to expect a few of those, but I would guess there were at least 15 that would fall into that category.  By contrast, many critical parts of the law were completely missing, such as ethics, while "death of the inventor" had three or four questions!

Reissue:  three or four questions, at least

      When an oath stating non-broadening is filed before two-year date, and then inventors decide to broaden it, right on the two-year anniversary.  In one variant, they failed to use a Cert. of Mailing.  And then the answers were still obscure (which statute should the examiner invoke, and should he consider it a broadening or non-broadening, when their broadening request came in non-timely?)

PCT:  three or four.   One threw in something about the Demand for Preliminary Examination, although it's not clear to me that it was at all relevant to the question asked.

I think every single one had to do with a PCT app being filed before 11/29/2000!  And most of them threw in facts about the PCT app claiming priority to a foreign app.

One had to do with whether you could FAX your national stage application to the USRO.

One had to do with a PCT app where there were two missing parts of the spec, and the applicant filed them at two intervals.  I used online access to the Treaty and its Rules to figure out (I hope!) that there are only 30 days to do this, and so his 2nd submission was not entered.

Appeal:  at least four.

(continued))

[ChiTownBob]

(this is the second half of my posting)

One was about the applicant asserting the claims do not rise or fail together, and the Examiner's Answer stating that they do, and the question was, what will the Board do as to the rejected claims?  Who would ever know this?

One was about how the applicant wanted to withdraw his appeal, once the Examiner's Answer was filed, and have some new prior art considered, and you had to choose between filing an RCE and filing a Continuation.  

One was about the extent to which a Federal Court decision was binding on the Office:  if the Court finds it not invalid, or if the Court finds it invalid, etc.

One related to the Board having remanded to the Examiner with a new ground of rejection, and the applicant wanted to reinstate his appeal – did he need to file a new Appeal Brief or could he proceed without one?

Examiner's search procedures:  one

Restriction:  at least three, maybe four.

One had to do with a Continuation of an app where a restriction requirement had been made, and the applicant had ignored the requirement and filed with all the original claims.

Oddly enough, there was nothing specifically about double patenting that I can recall.

Reexamination:  one or two, only on ex parte.

Death of the inventor:   at least three on this, and possibly four.   And in some, the answer choices were convoluted ("executor" vs "legal representative").

Protest:  at least one, possibly two.

Interference:  nothing

SIR:  nothing

Small entity:  one or two, including who can sign the assertion of it.  One about if the small entity status changes before issuance.

Assignee:   one question was, what things can an assignee sign, if he has never properly recorded his ownership?   (I concluded it was "a Certificate of Correction").  

There was nothing about the three-month requirement for recording an assignment, or conflicts about it.

Access to applications:  very little, maybe one, I think, about getting at the status of an application.  Also there was one, which I recognized from an old exam question, about whether an applicant could be excluded from access to the application.

Plant patents:  nothing

Design patents:  one.   I think it specifically told you that there was no patentable novelty other than the design, so you knew that the answer choice about filing a utility patent was out.

Ethics:  nothing, except for "duty to disclose" stuff.

112 paragraph 1:  one or two.   Some obscure answer choices about how the examiner approaches this issue.  

112 paragraph 2:  one.

Best mode:  one (one of the answer choices was:   if applicant doesn't designate a best mode, but puts forth several embodiments).

112 paragraph 6:  one or two.  It was the old question about a claim with a door having a doorknob and something else, using "means" language, and the cited prior art discloses a handle, and how do you overcome the reference?  (I took the choice about reciting a negative limitation:  "no handle".)

102(a):   at least one, which asked whether you had to file an English translation of a foreign-language reference.

103 rejections:  at least two, one about commercial success, one about experimental usage.   One of the questions asked if the examiner could make an unsupported

103 ( c ):  one or two

102(f):  there was a question I recognized from the old exams, about someone who's visiting in another country and sees a great invention, and brings it back to the US.  (The old question was Mexico and an agave machine – this one was France and a grape-crusher!)

Foreign filing license:  one or two.  Only one of the choices recited the 45-day limitation for notifying the PTO, so that was the one I took.

Oath/ADS conflicts:  one

New matter:  very little, or nothing

Patent term adjustment:  one or two.  And that one was about an app filed before 5/29/2000, so that it was either easier than PTA questions could be, or harder, depending on how you look at it.

Reply to Office actions, SSP, etc:   there was at least one, and it had to do with the 2 month / 3 month thing for reply to a Final rejection and Advisory action thereto.

Interviews with examiners:  at least one, where you had to know if an interview is a matter of right.

1.131 affidavits:  hardly anything, maybe nothing.

Request for information by the Examiner:  one

Contents of the "background of the invention" section of the spec:  one

Submissions on CD-ROMs:  one, a really weird question about having lots of small tables in your spec.  I consulted the CFRs and found that CD-ROMs must be submitted in duplicate, which was one of the answer choices.

Maintenance fees:   I think one of the answer choices asked whether the patent owner had to authorize someone else to pay the maintenance fees or not;  can't recall if the entire question was about maintenance.