When Stony Brook’s Center for Biotechnology developed a patent law internship program for science PhDs in the early 1990s, they gave young scientists a chance to experience other ways to make professional use of their STEM expertise. Pam Ancona, who was the first intern in this program and who later went on to law school, emphasizes why having a science background is so useful for a biotech patent attorney. Working with inventors, you become part of the creative process: “When you work with inventors, you always have to have the technical ability to put an inventor hat on yourself. You’re adding to that patent application. You’re trying to get them to broaden it out as much as possible.” She describes her experience with a particular patent, in which the company representatives “put up the basic structure” of the idea, and then “they would say to me, ‘Okay, it has to have elements A, B, and C.’ Then my job as a patent attorney is to say, ‘Okay, well, what about if you change C to C2?'” Her understanding of the science meant that she could make pertinent suggestions and offer her own ideas. “Then that sparks them to maybe broaden out what they were thinking of. That’s the fun part of this.”
