Hi all,
Can any of you shed any light on whether self-employment as a patent
agent during the school year while in law school will be considered a
conflict of interest by the law firm with which one intends to spend
one's 2L summer? I have a potential client who would like me to
prosecute a patent for them, and a future summer intern****p with a
firm that does IP (only patent litigation, not prosecution, but
potentially in the same area of technology). Is this a conflict of
interest, considering that the firm doesn't even do prosecution? Am I
required to tell them before I take on the client, even though I
haven't even started working for them yet? (and is this something
that generally tends to prejudice a law firm against one, or does it
work in one's favor?)
Any advice is welcome. This is a very good summer intern****p, so I'm
scared of doing anything to prejudice them against me - but OTOH, I'd
like to get some useful experience writing patent applications, as it
will probably help me with patent litigation as well (and quite
honestly, probably make me a lot more useful to the firm).
Oh, and I also wanted to thank this group for giving me such useful
claim-construction advice a few months ago; the USPTO just allowed my
very first application. Didn't even require any changes to the claims
- just approved it right away.
LM
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