Patent Work: What Early-Career Professionals Can Do — and What They Should Not Do

Patent work is often handled as a secondary task, especially by early-career professionals in small and medium-sized enterprises. This article clarifies which patent-related activities are realistic and valuable—and where clear limits are essential to avoid legal evaluation.

In many companies, patent-related work is not a full-time responsibility. Instead, early-career professionals are often asked—sometimes unexpectedly—to support patent tasks alongside their main roles in development, engineering, or design.

This setup implicitly defines patent work as a secondary task, typically limited to about 10% of working time. Under these conditions, success depends not on doing more patent work, but on doing the right patent work, with a clear focus on information rather than evaluation.

Why clear role definition is essential

Patents are only partly comparable to scientific publications. They are legally drafted, strategically written, and deliberately broad.

Without clear boundaries, early-career professionals may be expected to make judgments that exceed their experience and training. This often results in excessive caution or false confidence, both of which create risk for the company.

The solution is not deeper legal knowledge, but a precise definition of tasks and limits.

What early-career professionals are expected to do

Collect patent information systematically

Patent work begins with identifying relevant patents in public patent databases.

Typical activities include researching patents related to relevant competitors and relevant technology fields, and collecting factual information such as the applicant, filing and publication dates, the number of related filings, and the countries of protection.

At this stage, the result is a focused set of patent documents, without interpretation or evaluation.

Structure and classify patent information

Raw result lists are rarely useful. Patent information must be structured to become comparable and communicable.

This includes assigning patents to internal categories such as product lines, functions, technologies, or application areas, and adding a short comment to each patent. The comment may explain why a patent could be relevant, which internal topic it relates to, or why it is currently not relevant.

The same classification system should be applied to both third-party patents and the company’s own patents to ensure consistency and comparability.

This type of structured classification and commenting can be supported by simple patent tools such as PatCheck, which help keep information consistent and searchable.

Determine a simplified legal status

For an initial overview, a detailed legal analysis is not required. What matters is whether a patent may still have legal effect at all.

Each patent is assigned a simplified legal status, such as granted and in force, application pending, or expired and no longer in force.

This classification is purely factual and supports orientation and prioritization, not evaluation. Monitoring this simplified legal status can be supported by tools such as PatCheck, reducing manual effort in part-time patent work.

Present countries of protection

Patents only have effect in countries where protection exists.

Tasks include listing countries of protection and presenting this information neutrally and transparently, without drawing conclusions. This allows experienced colleagues to quickly decide whether further analysis is required.

Contribute to prioritization without evaluation

By combining technical content, structured classification, simplified legal status, and countries of protection, it becomes visible which patents may deserve further attention and which do not.

The task here is structured communication of facts, not interpretation. Any economic or legal evaluation, such as Freedom-to-Operate analysis, is explicitly performed by experienced professionals or patent attorneys.

What early-career professionals must not do

They must not analyze or interpret patent claims, assess scope of protection, perform legal risk or Freedom-to-Operate evaluations, or state whether a technology is blocked, safe, or critical.

Meaningful risk assessment requires claim analysis, which in turn requires experience in patent law. Without that experience, conclusions are unreliable.

A practical side effect

Patent work is rarely a preferred task for early-career professionals. However, when limited to structured reading and classification, it has a practical side effect.

By working with patents, professionals gain insight into technical solutions beyond their own organization, which companies are active in similar technology areas, and how comparable problems are addressed across industries.

This creates technical orientation and market awareness without legal responsibility.

Conclusion

Patent work does not require a full-time role. When structured correctly, it can be handled efficiently within 10% of working time, even as a secondary responsibility.

Early-career professionals can contribute effectively by focusing on systematic collection, structured classification and commenting, simplified legal status determination, and transparent presentation of countries of protection.

Identifying technical relevance is appropriate.
Structuring and commenting patent information is appropriate.
Assessing legal risk is not.

This approach makes patent monitoring practical, scalable, and reliable, and provides a solid foundation for informed decision-making within the company.

Assigning patent tasks also requires clear supervision.
The article “Supervising Patent Tasks as a Secondary Responsibility — A Guide for Supervisors in SMEs” describes how supervisors can structure and oversee these tasks responsibly.