From June 21st to 24th, 2011, a Suffolk Law reference librarian used the websites of the law firms in the study* to identify attorneys and non-attorneys who work in the area of patent law.  Most of the websites have search features that allowed individuals at the firm to be viewed by services or practice that included categories like patent, patent litigation, patent prosecution, IP, and IP litigation.    The reference librarian viewed the biographical information for each individual in these categories and identified those in Boston who work in patent law.  A copy was made of the biographical information of those individuals.

Other ways of identifying individuals were used for firms whose websites did not group individuals by services or practice: either keyword searching or-for smaller firms-viewing the biographical information of all individuals.

After all 26 firms were reviewed, the reference librarian and a student research assistant added data from the saved biographical information to an Excel spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet contained the following fields: Firm, Last Name, First Name, Job Title, Admitted to USPTO, Law School, Law School Year, Law School Concentration, LLM School, LLM Year, LLM Concentration, Bachelors School, Bachelors Year, Bachelors Major, Masters School, Masters Year, Masters Major, PhD School, PhD Year, PhD Major, MD School, and Notes.  The first four fields were filled for all individuals; information was only entered in the remaining fields when available in the individual’s law firm website listing.

For those individuals whose biographical information did not indicate registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an additional search was done in the Patent Attorney/Agent database.  The reference librarian conducted these searches on July 27th and 28th, 2011.

* The study included the following 26 firms: Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.; Bingham McCutchen LLP; Brown Rudnick LLP; Cesari and McKenna LLP; Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP; Dechert LLP; Duane Morris LLP; Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP (now Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP); Fish & Richardson P.C.; Foley & Lardner LLP; Foley Hoag LLP; Goodwin Procter LLP; Greenberg Traurig, LLP; Holland & Knight LLP; K & L Gates LLP; McDermott Will & Emery; Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo P.C.; Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP; Nixon Peabody LLP; Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP; Proskauer Rose LLP; Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P.; Ropes & Gray LLP; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP; Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C.  These firms were chosen based on the Avery Index’s ranking of the Top Patent Firms in Boston, MA.  Due to recent mergers and name changes, some of the firm names in the above list are different from those on the Avery Index website.