Comparison of Patent Bar Exam Training Programs
[Based on certain facts and the opinions of Doug Pinnow, Ph.D. as of January 16, 2017.]
Your Options
So, what are your options if your objective is to pass the Patent Bar Exam? There are three basic possibilities:
- Purchase and study a book on how to pass the Patent Bar Exam supplemented by gleaning information from blogs on the Internet and downloading the 2900 page Manual of Patent Examining Procedure from the USPTO’s web site. Then, establish your own study program and independently determine when you believe that you are ready to take the exam.
- Enroll in an online training program, such as PassPatentBar, which you can work on in your spare time with all of the study materials supplied along with efficient training strategies and simulated examinations so that you can gauge your progress, or
- Spend several days (up to a week) attending one of the live training courses that are available (typically at hotels) at limited times and limited locations – followed by additional at-home study.
Comparing Options
Although the first option has the lowest up-front cost, for many students, it turns out to be the most time consuming and expensive. Rather than “going-it-alone”, a typical student can save over 50 hours of preparation time and a considerable amount of money associated with repeating a failed exam by selecting a structured course offered by either the second or third option.
NOTE: The application costs to take the Patent Bar Exam and associated fees that must be paid to the USPTO add up to $300 and the cost for taking the test administered by Prometric, a service company contracted by the USPTO, is an additional $165. The combined total of $465 must be paid every time a failed test is repeated.
The second option is preferred to the third for most engineers, scientists and others who are accustomed to learning on the Internet and who can not easily arrange to attend a live course that is not directly related to their primary jobs. An additional consideration is that the expenses associated with a live course are substantially greater, in the range of $2,500 to $3,000, as compared to several hundred dollars for online study programs. For example, the Practising Law Institute (PLI) offers a live training course for $2,895 (see www.PLI.edu for further details.) and the Patent Resources Group offers a similar course for $2399 (see www.patentresources.com).
Price
PassPatentBar is one of the four most popular online training programs. The other three are PatBar, OmniPrepPatent, and PatentEducationSeries.
Here is how these programs stack up based on price:
- PatBar $695
- OmniPrepPatent $495
- PatentEducationSeries $597
- PassPatentBar $389
When you search the Internet for other online courses, you will come across additional training programs offered at lower prices that are presented to appear as if they are online programs like those above. However, if you look closely, you will see that they are merely offering you printed training books and possibly old fashioned flash cards and audio tapes. One such course also boasts about including the MPEP on a CD (which you can download for free at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s web site www.USPTO.gov). All of these types of courses are simply variations on Option 1, above. That is, purchase and study a book on your own with a little extra “window dressing” added.
SPECIAL CAUTION ON AUDIO TAPES
Audio tapes are great for listening to someone reading an exciting novel to you while you may be driving your car. But, for conveying complex patent bar examination materials, audio tapes are about as useless as they would be for teaching you calculus while driving! The bottom line on audio training tapes is that they can waste your valuable time.
Pass Rates
Since the Patent Bar Exam has a well earned reputation for being very difficult, everyone considering paying for a training program should be motivated to select the one that will ensure them the highest probability of passing. (Price should, of course, be an important secondary consideration.)
This simple fact has led to overblown claims and guarantees by training program providers that are often too good to be true. And, as the old saying goes, If it is too good to be true it probably is (too good to be true).
Unfortunately, when students are anxious to pass the patent bar exam, many tend to become vulnerable to over-blown claims like:
“Psst. We can sell you a list of most of the 100 questions you will see on tomorrow’s exam. Purchase it and you are guaranteed to pass!”
In reality, no such list exists.
The following provides some helpful information on the pass rates claimed for the training programs discussed above:
- Patent Resources Group
This live training course ($2,399), stated in the past on their web site that “…our students have a pass rate that is 20 percentage points higher than the USPTO average.”Since the USPTO has indicated that the pass rates have varied from 51% to 59% since computerized testing began in 2004, one may conclude that their pass rates are in the range of 71% to 79%.THIS APPEARS REASONABLE
- PatBar
Even though PatBar ($695) touts their years of experience in providing training to pass the patent bar exam and stresses the quality of their program, they do not offer any factual information on the pass rates of their students.
- OmniPrepPatent ($495) is much bolder in their statements about pass rates. They claim:
* 100% Pass Guarantee. We now make it impossible to fail. But, should the impossible happen, we’ll gladly provide you with a 100% refund.
* 90% of All Exam Questions. Our Exam Question/Topic Post and Exam Question Bank
contains over 90% of the current exam questions.
* 98.1% Pass Rate.
THIS SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE! Why would anyone pay $2399 for a live course with a
pass rate in the range of 71 to 79% when they could purchase one with a pass rate of 98.1% for much
less ($495)?
While OmniPrepPatent’s claims may appear to be just what someone hoping to pass the patent bar exam is looking for, you are encouraged to pause and question whether they are real or just over-the-top hype and baseless promotion.
First, how can anyone make a 100% pass guarantee to a really dumb or lazy person that they will pass the patent bar exam? What hoops will you have to jump through to qualify for their money back guarantee?
Since no one outside of the USPTO and their contracted testing organization has legal access to current exam questions which are continually changing, how is it possible for a training provider to claim that they have access to over 90% of the current exam questions? Are they breaking the law or just lying to you?
Just how is that 98.1% pass rate determined? Specifically, does it include students who sign up and pay for the course and become disenchanted and decide never to take the patent bar exam or otherwise fail to satisfy the terms of the guarantee? The answer to this question is “NO”. In reality, the stated 98.1% pass rate only establishes that 1.9% (100% – 98.1%) of OmniiPrepPatent’s students ever receive a refund – nothing more!
If OmniPrepPatent, or any other training provider, were actually interested in establishing an accurate average pass rate for their students, it would be simple for them to calcualte the percentage of their enrolled students from past years who now appear in the listing of registered patent practitioners that is made publically available by the USPTO. But that is not done!
- PatentEducationSeries
Offers no information or guidance on the pass rate of their students. However, this course does offer a “100% Risk Free Guarantee”. But when you read the fine print, this guarantee does not activate if a student fails to pass the patent bar exam. Rather, in that case the student will merely be given a 6 month extension of their access to the web site if he/she sends in a copy of the failure notice. The only way to activate the PatenetEducationSeries money back guarantee is by requesting a refund within 14 days of enrollment. In reality, such a 14-day period is far too short for a student to be able to determine his/her prospects for passing the actual bar exam if they continue with the PatentEducationSeries course – making the guarantee essentially worthless.
- PassPatentBar’s position on pass rates is straight forward. Their position is: You should study and work hard to achieve a grade of 84% or better on at least one 3-hour simulated Patent Bar Exam and your money back guarantee is assured if you do not pass the actual Patent Bar Exam. Based on experience accumulated over the past four years, 92% of students who have achieved an 84% or better grade on at least one 3-hour simulated patent bar exam have gone on to pass the actual bar exam.
Why Don’t Other Training Programs Offer A Money Back Guarantee Similar To PassPartentBar’s?
Since the objective of all training programs is to pass the patent bar exam, an important consideration is which of the courses have the confidence to offer a money back guarantee if a student does not pass? Here’s how they stand on that point:
- PatBar NO
- OmniPrepPatent YES
- PatentEducation Series NO
- PassPatentBar YES
Of the two “YES” answers, there is quite a difference between what is required of the student to qualify for the money back guarantee. OmniPrepPatent requires the student to “send us your original USPTO Official Examination Results Letter via regular mail within 30 days of your initial enrollment expiration date .. ” to qualify for a refund. This is strange. Anyone who fails the patent bar exam will surely remember their exam date. But, how many students remember the expiration date of their enrollment? And what if the student fails the patent bar exam more than 30 day after the expiration date of their initial enrollment? And what happens if the original USPTO Official Examination Results Letter gets lost in the mail or is misplaced? In contrast, the money back guarantee for PassPatentBar activates as soon as the student has achieved a reasonable skill level (84% score on a simulated exam taken during a single 3-hour session). This score was selected to provide both the student and PassPatentBar with a mutually high level of confidence that the actual exam will be passed when taken. So, PassPatentBar eliminates all the busywork of jumping through unnecessary hoops. And a copy of the USPTO Official Examination Results Letter will be accepted at any time to qualify for a full refund.
PassPatentBar’s simulated bar exams use modern technology similar to that employed by the USPTO to randomly select a group of 50 questions from a large question bank and to administer each test online. This provides an immediate and verifiable feedback loop to both the student and the training program staff on test results. Significantly, the odds are essentially zero that any two tests would be the same.
In contrast, PatBar’s simulated patent bar exams are provided on a CD mailed to the students rather than online. This makes verification of test results impractical. Upgrading this older technology has not been a priority for PatBar. So, they simply do not offer any money back guarantee.
In the case of OmniPrepPatent, their simulated exams do not employ randomly selected questions from a question bank. Rather, they simply use a set of old exams made available by the USPTO. After a student has taken all of the available exams in this limited set, the only option is to repeat prior exams. In this case, it would be easy for a student to get an artificially high exam grade on a repeated exam for which he/she already has the answers. In addition, OmniPrepPatent encourages the exam taker to keep track of the time elapsed during the test by simply monitoring their computer’s clock. OmniPrep has no way to determine how long a student actually took to complete an exam. This is another reason why they can not duplicate PassPatentBar’s guarantee strategy.
In the case of PatentEducationSeries, it appears that they have the technical ability to offer a money back guarantee similar to PassPatnetBar. So, the fact that they only offer a 14-day money back guarantee is, presumably, a business decision possibly related to the pass rates of their students.
Further Differences Between Training Programs
In evaluating the on-line training programs, one must consider whether the various teaching strategies are best adapted to a particular student’s needs. OmniPrepPatent uses a strategy that relies heavily on memorization. For example, guiding the student to devote days to rote memorization of the major section headings in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. In contrast, both PatBar and PassPatentBar have a more intuitive approach to familiarizing the student with this Manual and teaching him/her how to quickly navigate through it to quickly find correct answers on the actual Patent Bar Exam.
PatentEducationSeries has a rather bizarre approach. They offer a “Guidebook” so, as they have said, you can “Learn where the material is written within the MPEP even though you aren’t using it to study. This means that you will know exactly where the material is on test day when you are limited to the computerized MPEP.” Good luck with that approach! PassPatnetBar‘s position is that Guidebooks and Workbooks are no substitute for direct use and practice with the MPEP to enhance your searching skills and thereby maximize your score on test day.
NOTE: The Patent Bar Exam is an “open book” exam that provides access to a searchable version of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure and other supplemental documents where all of the answers may be found. Due to the limited time available during the exam, it is important that the student become highly skilled at quickly finding correct answers.
SO WHY SHOULD YOU PAY MORE FOR A TRAINING PROGRAM THAN IS NECESSARY?
PassPatentBar is the most cost-effective online training program that offers a full money-back guarantee if you do not pass the Patent Bar Exam.