Overview - 10 Days
In Step 3 you will focus on the actual questions that you will see on the patent bar exam. The Question Bank covers approximately 75% of the questions asked on the current exam (the Exam Question Post and Full-Length Exams cover the other 15% or so). It contains detailed questions and answers of past questions that are repeatedly seen on the current exam, and provides you with a clear idea of the newest unpublished questions seen on the exam. Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with the exact fact pattern of the unpublished questions due to copyright laws, but the approximation that we provide will be more than enough to allow you to recognize and answer these questions when you see them on your exam.

Remember, when memorizing the questions in the Question Bank, you must understand why each is question is answered the way that it is, because the USPTO will sometimes change the question slightly and this change will result in a change in the correct answer. You should either download the zipped Searchable eMPEP or use online version of the Searchable eMPEP and look up the sections referred to in each answer to become familiar with where each topic covered is found in the electronic MPEP you will be using on the exam itself. Additionally, the Supplemental Material will now also be searchable on the exam. Please download and familiarize yourself with this material as well, if you have not already.

We have also included our MPEP Search Strategy in this Step. On the patent bar exam you are provided a PDF version of the MPEP. This MPEP includes a search function that can be used to lookup key words in a question whose answer you are unsure of. This search function is equivalent to the 'Find Next' function in current Acrobat Reader. It is limited in that it can only be used to search one chapter of the MPEP at a time, so unless you know which chapter covers that particular question, you could waste quite a bit of time searching through this exam MPEP.

Many students have complained that past search strategies, such as looking up a key word in presented in a question by searching the MPEP index or table of contents takes still takes too much time. Our MPEP Search Strategy is provides you with a method of memorizing which key words or phrases go with each chapter, so that when you see a word or phrase in a question you are unsure of, you will know which chapter the question deals with. This will allow you to lookup any question that you are not sure about during the exam in the shortest amount of time possible.

Please memorize the Question Bank and MPEP Search Strategy. This step should be completed in 10 days, with 2 hours of study per day.