Cardinal Intellectual Property Reviews

They don't actually have time to train anyone, since they can't slow done the continuous flow of cases from their contracts. Most of their new hires have never worked with IP before, and are either students fresh out of college or various professionals who were laid off or otherwise had a falling out from their main careers...in other words, people with no long-term career plans. The result is a disorganized workflow and high turnover rate. It seems a matter of routine for people to just walk out, and they continuously interview for replacements. There is a disconnect between HR, the admins and the actual attorneys you work with. CEO Frank seems like a solid professional but as an analyst you won't interact with him at all. There is no real advancement, no such thing as a "senior analyst", you can just make more money by doing more cases but there is a limit to how many you can feasibly do in a given week. HR will promise you the moon in terms of flexibility and payout on eventual higher-value cases, but reality is quite different when you actually work with the attorneys and administrators. If you go in full-time there is a minimum number of cases you are expected to do, which becomes clear well after you join, and if you have a deficit they'll expect you to make it up by taking on more cases per week. There are no transferable skills to learn here beyond some specialized database searching. This is NOT an introduction to the world of IP or patent prosecution. In short, this is a dead-end career move for anyone with a STEM background. If you're in law school or plan to be a patent attorney then maybe it is worth a few months, but after that you can leave and they won't bat an eye when you do and simply replace you with some newly-graduated engineering major with 0 work experience. If you put in 40-50 hours a week you might make between 50-65k annually, if you're lucky. If you're unemployed with bills looming that might seem tempting but this is not a long-term option. There is a small minority of analysts with backgrounds in law who make more, which is natural since they don't require as much training to prepare the required legal documents.

Other reviewers have already pointed out many of the flaws, such as the completely random quality standards which depend on the SAO (search authorizing officer) that is assigned to your search, the general lack of compensation, the lack of benefits, and the lack of any paid time off (that includes weekends, holidays, vacations, sick days, etc. - if you're not working, you are not getting paid). I will add my 2 cents. During the time I worked at Cardinal, I went from making about 28k in my first year to about 65k-70k the year that I left. The entire time I was there I worked pretty much 6-7 days a week, for about 8-10 hours a day. It is true that eventually you do get more efficient at searching, but there is a ceiling to this and there is a lot of luck (or perhaps favoritism) involved. No matter how good you are, when you get stuck with a case with 200+ claims (this has happened to me multiple times), you are in trouble. These cases can take anywhere from 2-5 days (one case had almost 500 claims). Unlike the USPTO, there is no mechanism by which searchers at Cardinal can claim undue burden and reduce the search load. This means that from time to time, no matter how good you are, you will end up getting paid $300 (pre-tax) for almost a weeks worth of work. That's $60 a day, or under $8 an hour (assuming an eight hour day). Unfortunately, these types of cases were not a rare occurrence. I know this because at one point HR and management sent out an email to all searchers telling them that if they spent more than 30 hours on a search that they had to stop work immediately and notify management. This was most likely to avoid running afoul of any minimum wage laws. Think about that. This was such a frequent occurrence that it needed to be addressed at the management level.