u/Jackoose

First-first, sorry for the typos/stream of consciousness. This is a topic that comes up often in this sub, but in a different way. Young students without scientific backgrounds are often asking how to get into patent law and being told they can not do prosecution and to try litigation because it doesn’t require scientific understanding. My post is from the perspective of someone in prosecution that is mid career. Thus, I’m not looking for career guidance but looking to understand more about how litigation in highly technical fields works.  

 First, let me preface this: I am not trying to offend anyone. Senior patent litigators in big law or mid/small firms have proven themselves and have the wins and career history to back it up. They’ve saved tens of billions for their clients. They have worked extremely hard to get to where they are in a challenging profession. They are machines. They can learn complex subject matter quickly. I admire their abilities. Nobody doubts they are effective.

I am not questioning their ability to do their jobs; they obviously do them well. I am confused about how they do them so effectively (sans any scientific understanding).

My attempts to rationalize it go like this. I notice that the litigators without scientific credentials are all older. 60+. Patent litigators that are new (30-45 years of age) in big law all seem to have PhDs (or maybe MS) in their scientific discipline (this is life sciences). Are the senior litigators leaning on the scientific strength of their younger associates?

Is this correlation between younger age and increased scientific credentials simply because the bar has been raised since there is so much more competition for jobs now than there was 40 years ago? If you have people without scientific backgrounds doing this successfully at the highest level (the senior folks), why are all the new people required to have PhDs rather than simply be the best litigators/lawyers?

Some of the pharma lit I see deals with complex chemistry. Of course much of it deals with semantic, non-technical issues as well, but those aren’t the ones that I’m worried about. The depos involve complex answers coming from expert witnesses that are elite scientific researchers. They are being deposed by someone with a humanities/art degree and zero scientific background. How do they even depose someone like this effectively? How do they capitalize on something the witness says if they do not understand the subject matter and are following a script prepared by their PhD-having colleagues and their own hired experts on their side? Is that what is going on when the non-scientific lawyers depose an expert witness scientist (the script following)?

 

Granted, these older lead litigators have young associates on their teams that all have PhDs. They have their own expert witnesses helping them formulate their own stategies. I'm wondering if its really them doing the technical aspects of the work. Do these senior litigators operate so effectively by cataloguing all of the possible topics that could come up during a depo and having this information in the hopper ready to use it if needed? If so, that is very impressive to have such command of so much material at the ready. Seems far easier to just understand the material technically and respond to a witness using that approach (combine with the pre-prep of course).

Like I've sat in on meetings and hearings with some of these litigators that have non technical backgrounds and you can't have a conversation with them about "what ifs." You can certainly try to but it never seems to go that deep into such issues. They seem to have a script they stick to.

I know part of being a good patent lawyer is having the ability to learn new things quickly, on the job, but learning chemistry or molecular bio takes a solid 4-5 years of study to even reach the undergrad level which isn't enough imo.

Again, no shade, I'm just confused about how it works. Do you think that 20-40 years from now patent litigators in highly technical fields (pharma let's say) will all have PhDs (or Msc)? Do you think the fact that there are elite patent litigators for pharma with no scientific education will be a relic of the past eventually, or is it simply not needed and we will contiue to see patent litigators without scientific credentials litigating pharma patents? Is it their skill at lawyering (digesting large amounts of complex material and having it mentally filed at-the-ready combined with knowing how and when to utilize it) that will dominate and ensure that they have a place for decades to come in this field?

Seems to come up in discussions. Lets say you have two parents that are genetic carriers for muscular dystrophy. Their child will live an extremely painful short life of joints breaking and surgery after surgery until they suffocate to death because their muscles can't breath for them.

You say that parents with such genetics should refrain from reproducing to spare the child this short life of torture.

You're called "ableist" by a 19 year old reddittor that is healthy and doing backflips on a trampoline and then going off to play soccer for 6 hours in the golden sun with their friends. They have absolutely no clue the amound of torture and suffring that chronic illness brings and just want to rationalize their base urge to reproduce no matter what the cost paid by the rest of society, the child or earth will be.

how do you rebut this "ableist" accustation?

I mean I like to just respond "ableist? I don't even the most healthiest of humans should be born"...but that just further confuses them because you're trying to argue the point of suffering for antinatalism, not argue antinatalism per se which is just too much for their selfish brains to handle. You would think you could at least win on the point of not wanting to create human misery vehicles that will sit in a bed in agony for their short lives...but we can't even win on that point either.

So, without naming any specific subreddit (I've seen it in multiple different ones). You have a subreddit dedicated to a disease that is known to be genetic. The people posting are talking about suicide from the pain they have. They are disabled, broke from medical bills and inability to work. Young people too.

And then you hear them say "...and I really want to have a kid but I don't know how I will provide for them and have the energy to raise them with my chronic illness."

1. This statement they make is totally about THEM. I want kids. I don't have energy. I can't provide.

Then all the people in the comments cheer them on. Nobody even brings up the fact that the child has a liklihood of suffering with the same disease...for what? To become an amazon delivery slave? At best case scenario work some soul draining office job even if it pays well? Risking a lifetime of suffering and misery for the child so they can work for amazon and barely scrape by? The parent certainly isn't in a position to give that kid a strong start in life. They are also usually broke from not being able to work and medical bills.

It's absolutely astonishing that they never stop to think that they are replicating their own misery by playing russian roulette with their child's life. Also, despite how difficult their life is due to being chronically ill, they want to make their life even harder and take on an immense financial burden to have a kid that may end up sick as well.

One time I said something. The replies were all just pure cope from people with the same disease saying "maybe the child won't have it." These ppl don't care about playing russian roulette with the gun pointed at someone elses head apparently (the child).

This was quite the rambling post, so thanks for reading. I came across this behavior on one subreddit then started searching around in other disease subreddits for the topic and was very saddened to see the level of delusion, calousness, and selfishness.

And our viewpoint on this is the minority. We are seen as crazy if we suggest maybe it's not a good idea to pass on genetics to a new being that will life in torture and pain if they inherit the disease. I would almost call this level of callousness evil.

There are plenty of people that have kids in their 20s and are healthy and have had great lives and don't have a good understanding of the full human experience. They've never gone outside their bubble and seen true suffering. They are very self centered and sheltered and have not been exposed to the danger life has to offer and the guaranteed death at the end. I can't fault those people very much. However, I'm baffled at people with horrible diseases that they can pass on genetically and the thought never even occurrs to them that their kid would have the disease too it seems. Or does it occur to them but somehow they still think it's worth creating someone to go through that?

Do you think ivf should be illegal? Seems like if you can ban stopping life (abortion), we should be able to ban starting life.

also bullshut euthanasia is mostly illegal and imposslbe to get.

why the asymmetry in between ending/stopping VS starting life

I'm a US patent agent with a PhD in a pharma-relevant discipline. I'm two years into an in-house position in big pharma. I had 10 years of biglaw experience prior. My academic and biglaw experience are high-pedigree institutions so that has always helped me land interviews easily thus far.

I really like the job. I like the pay. I like the work-life balance. I prefer it to being a drafting machine as I was in biglaw. I wouldn't mind going back to law firm prep/pros work though either.

Anyways, I have this nagging feeling that I'm just coasting or not developing. Personally, I'm fine with that. I don't need to get a JD and become GC then CEO. I don't need to make more money, I'm happy with my pay and don't live an expensive lifestyle anyways. However, I see people around me that are mid-career agents going to lawschool, going back to biglaw as agents (no idea why they they don't even pay more but I guess it's considered more "hard-core" experience). I guess comparison is the theif of joy but this isn't joy we are talking about this is a career.

All I want is to remain wanted, relevant, I don't want my pay or years of experience to outgrow my credentials and get canned when I'm older.

There's also the fact that pharma/biotech is highly a volatile mass-layoff ridden world. Although, I don't see these "reorgs" as they like to call them impacting the IP groups as much as R&D or business roles that are more linked to the ebbs and flows of the company's output and sales of products.

Any insight, advice, or criticisim? I'd love to gain some perspective, especially being newish to in-house.

Any favorite suppliers for marshmallow root? I've tried a few different supplies but looking for the product with high mucilage content (supposed active component). Mucilage is the stuff that makes the tea sticky/goopy.

im looking for organic root. Good prices seem to be about $20 a lb (16 oz).

first question, how bad is the procedure pain and post-procedure pain if you're a male and its done without general anesthesia.

My pain isn't like catastrophic catastrophic (maybe from a 3-6 out of 10).

Tried basically everything and every medicine. I can't be very active at all in life or it will flare up. working heavy hours or stress flares. travel. I'm opioid dependent because of IC.

So it's pretty bad on paper even though this life just seems so normal to me now. Suicidal ideation comes up now and again.

I haven't had like insane crippling pain in many years.

The medical literature around botox sounds pretty good for my particular symptoms and complaints.

Should I go for it? I'm so reluctant for invasive proedures but when you read the above my life is pretty objectively bad and I should go for it right?

I just don't want it to make it worse is my biggest fear.