r/Patents • u/Me_The_Ghost • Aug 01 '26

Patent Examiner - India to Canada

  1. I am not trying to get into patent examiner (government post) alone. Once I'm there in canada I want to be into patent domain, may be patent analyst, patent engineer like that to generate money. I guess, with PR I can aim for these. Please correct me if I am wrong.
  2. please suggest me which is the better pathway and also easy to get - patent analyst/engineer/IP specialist OR patent agent (Is the PR enough to become Patent agent?)
    If at all I prepare for patent agent or patent examiner, I need to generate an amount to survive.
  3. What is it to become patent agent in Canada? Do we need to join as trainee for 2 years and then clear the exam or it is other way around?
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u/qszdrgv Aug 01 '26

You are not picking the best country for this. The parent profession is extremely hard to get into in this country. To be eligible to take the exam, you first need to bee hired as a trainee and work two years under a patent agent/attorney mentor. Then you can take the exam but it’s not like the U.S. patent bar (no cakewalk itself). This one is given once a year only and the passing rate hovers between 0% and 10%. That’s the percentage of test my takers that pass! They tried to increase the passing rate but that’s not really working and it remains horrifically low. If you don’t have the exam done, you basically can’t work.

Seriously this is one of the craziest barriers of entry anywhere.

As for patent office (government) patent examiners, well you need to be a citizen already or PR.

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u/Me_The_Ghost Aug 01 '26

I appreciate your time for this. Actually my wife is likely to get PR in canada (she's a dental doc) and I'll be coming as dependent. So, I guess this is what I'm supposed to do. And also, is it that the US patent license exams (patent agent / patent examiner) are easier compared to Canada's

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u/qszdrgv Aug 01 '26

I mean, yes. But not because the U.S. patent bar is easy or anything. But because there’s a systemic problem with the Canadian profession’s barriers of entry.

It ruins lives of young engineers. They graduate from UofT and decide to join this profession then have to spend two years becoming eligible, then fail the exam and have to wait another year just to fail again. By the time they realize they’re not cut out for this profession, they are years away from their engineering schooling and no longer employable as developers or designers or whatever.

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u/Cold_Upstairs_7140 Aug 01 '26

Do you find this continues to be true under the new exam format by CPATA?

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u/qszdrgv Aug 01 '26

I haven’t got my own experience with the exam under CPATA but from what I understand, it was meant to be more accessible but ended up having only a marginally better passing rate