WESTIE of the Month - LRK Patent Law Fim & Washington International Patent Academy

WEST ROUND 7 / JANG, EUNNA

LRK PATENT LAW FIRM & WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL PATENT ACADEMY

It is almost one month since I started working for LRK Patent Law Firm and Washington International Patent Academy in Vienna. On behalf of its clients, LRK Patent Law Firm deals with patent matters. Procedure for obtaining a patent, which are issued by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office in the Alexandria, takes three year on average, and many skilled professionals should be involved into an inspection of the patent. LRK represents the clients from application to maintenance of patents throughout this procedure. WIPA is a patent academy that LRK patents attorneys manage. WIPA have provided patent training programs in cooperation with the Global Intellectual Property Academy in USTPO. The training programs have been held in USTPO. Trainees for the program are mostly patent professionals from institute of the universities and legal department of corporations. Depending on interests of participated organizations, WIPA adjusts the programs with GIPA and helps to improve the quality of programs.

For this reason, my internship duties are divided into two parts. At LRK, my main daily duty is to assist the firm’s attorneys and maintain a patent management software program. This program contains information on each patent case of LRK. It helps patent law firms to keep important dates of cases and get a patent safely without an error. Based on the data in the software program, every morning I have a meeting at the conference room with co-workers in that I learn how works are going on LRK. In addition to maintaining the program, I have learned overall factors of U.S. patent law with assistance by the firm. I spend time on the duties for WIPA in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. To assist the beginning and end of the training programs is my biggest duty for WIPA. During working for successful programs, chances to attend classes of the program help me a lot to learn about U.S. patent law system through lectures of professionals who work in USTPO. All participants in our training programs also have many experiences and knowledge about patents. To assist the programs offer a good opportunity to communicate with them.

Frankly, to find an internship at a law firm which can give professional experiences is not easy because American students who want internships at law firms always exist. In fact, my interest is to work at a law firm whose specialty is to solve international legal conflicts in international trade sector. Even though there are lots of law firms in US, most opportunities for Korean students to work at law firms are usually limited to work at immigration, insurance or personal injury law firms which need interns who are supposed to assist their Korean clients. I realized the reality soon and prepared to work at any law firm. Fortunately, however, KUSCO provided me a good environment where I can learn a lot and improve myself professionally. To have participated in WEST program is the greatest thing that I have done around the years. Now I am convinced that WEST participants have endless opportunities to improve themselves in the United States.