Six life scientists started work for the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) this week, marking the first additions to the ranks of biotechnology patent examiners since the federal budget bogged down in Congress last fall. The USPTO positions are coveted stepping-stones, but where they lead has changed in recent years.

The six life scientists are joining 48 electrical engineers in this year's entering class of examiners, and offers are out to many more scientists, said Esther Kepplinger, deputy commissioner for patent operations. The budget delay forced the office to scale back its goal of hiring 750 new examiners this year. Instead, only 300 new examiners will be hired in 2003, chosen from a field of 3,300 applicants. Just 15 of those slots are allocated to the biotech sector.

"Traditionally, our largest pool of applicants has been in biotech," said Kepplinger, a biologist and chemist who started her own career at USPTO in the days when biologists needed not apply. Once life science discoveries were deemed patentable, the situation changed rapidly, until at one point there were 10 biology-PhD applicants for every job, she recalled.

Then came the biotech boom years, when new and growing companies raided the ranks of patent examiners for employees. By 2000, the examiner attrition rate was 13.8%, almost double this year's projected rate. USPTO went to the Office of Personnel Management for permission to offer a better package.

Entry-level examiners with Bachelor's degrees can now make from $32,819 to $52,849. Master's degrees command a salary range of $47,240 to $61,413. A PhD is worth $54,580 to $70,959. Fifty-four percent of the 273 biotech patent examiners hired between 1999 and 2002 had PhDs.

However, a stint at the patent office, once an invaluable credential in the biotech sector, is not worth much these days, said Fredric Abramson, an entrepreneur who teaches in Johns Hopkins University's advanced biotechnology program. Many of his students are patent examiners, looking for a way out, Abramson said.

"What that says to me is that the value of having been an examiner is fairly narrow unless you're going into a law firm in patent law," Abramson said. "They are sucking people up like mad."

True, said Leslie Levine, chief intellectual property counsel of PerkinElmer Life Sciences. Intense as the competition is for USPTO jobs, that is only a prelude to ferocious contests to land the critical first job as a patent lawyer. More than 200 "extremely qualified" postdocs and some tenured faculty competed for a single position at a major New York IP firm recently, she said. In that heated climate, patent examiner credentials count.

"It's slightly easier to break into a patent office as an examiner than to get into a law firm," she said. "It's a wonderful entree into the career. A few years at the patent office and it's a sure thing that you would get into a law firm."

Joseph Ricigliano left the post of senior scientist at Paradigm Biosciences and put in three years at USPTO before joining Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC, as a patent law clerk, working toward his law degree. "It was a tremendous opportunity to learn," he said of his time at the USPTO.

Law firms start new patent attorneys at $115,000 or higher. After three or four years in the firm, headhunters start calling daily.

"It's a very mind-bending event when the headhunter calls start coming because as a scientist the only time you get someone eager to take you in is when you're applying as slave labor," Levine said. "Applying for grants you beat yourself bloody. Then for the first time in your life you're a hot property."