Step 2 consists of reviewing the Guidebook to Patent Law and the Workbook Quizzes.  This step is significantly more time consuming than step 1. In fact, it is the most time consuming portion of the course and will have a major impact on determining whether you pass or fail the Patent Bar exam.

I’ll walk you through the first things to do once you’re on Step 2.

The chapters are all listed out for you here and organized into 4 different sections.  The chapters correspond to the chapters in the currently tested version of the MPEP.

Here if you hover over one of these chapters, you can see the chapter number and the title.

There’s also a percentage which shows you your progress.

Each and every one of these mini-courses as you may want to call them goes to a particular chapter.

So here, I’m going to click on chapter 100.

If you click on chapter 100 you are taken to our MPEP 100 Analysis page. This page has a lot of valuable information on it.  You can start by reviewing the chapter summary.

Next, you can see how this chapter stacks up by looking at the Chapter Ranking Chart. If you look at the overall score, a 4 or 5-star chapter means it’s very important for the exam, covers a massive amount of material, and is very complex. As you can see, chapter 100 is pretty mild with less than a 2 star overall ranking.

Next up is the MPEP Section Ratings.

The MPEP section ratings shows you which section of that chapter is often tested.  As you can see, section 103 is tested. It has a 1 star rating along with the other usually tested section which is section 140. Both of these sections only get a single star. The stars represent how likely you are to see a question on that section on your exam.

The rating system goes from 1 star to 5 stars. A 5 star section means it’s very likely you will see several questions on that section on your exam. 1 star means you might see a single question (or even just part of a question) that refers to that section. It’s completely possible to be tested on anything (even a section we don’t put any stars by) so you can really only use this to gauge the importance.

However, you can spend more of your time reviewing subsections that have the most chance of being tested especially if you’re on a short deadline to take the test.

Let me show you what’s on each of these section pages. As you can see on section 103, there’s a summary right up top.  These summaries are incredibly valuable. We summarize chapters, subsections, and sub-sub sections. Writing all the summaries and keeping them updated is a massive undertaking for us as there are hundreds of them, but they are a very useful tool for you when preparing for the exam.

In addition to the text summary, there’s also an audio file right up top. Each of these summaries has audio so you can listen or listen and read if you’d rather. The summaries are recorded by an AI voice because there are so many. We hope it helps make learning the material easier for you.

Then, we start going through the chapter by pulling out key points in an outline format. You can read through these, but that is a passive form of learning. So we’ve put together our workbook quizzes to help you actively go through this material. We’ll show you those in another video. For now, just know, you can definitely skim these outlines and take notes on what you’re learning.

Back on the Analysis page, the main objectives for the chapter follow the frequency ratings.  The objectives list out the major points of a particular chapter along with the major laws and rules to review.

Then the key terms follow. You’ll want to make sure you know these terms. You can click on each of them and you’ll be taken to the glossary definition so you can review them easily.

As you can see, the overview page for each chapter is packed full of valuable information.

Once you’ve reviewed the analysis page you should start going through the MPEP chapter. The easiest way to do this is by using the sidebar.

Each chapter in the MPEP is broken down into countless subsections. They are all numbered here in the sidebar navigation.

In chapter 100 you start with subsection 101 and move onto subsection 150. Many of the more complex chapters have sub-sub sections that drill down even further.

You can click on a page like 103. Again, this one has a frequency rating. So spending more time on this section makes sense. Once you’re done with any given page, you can move onto the next one.  If you’ve completed it then click on ‘complete and continue’. This saves your progress so the next time you come back, you know where you left off.

We cut out approximately 70% of the material in the MPEP in the Guidebooks. Even though there still is a lot here, there’s much less than if you were to review the MPEP on your own.

Back on the dashboard page you have all the different chapters of the MPEP listed out. Some are long and detailed while others are short. Keep in mind that they are heavily consolidated versions of the MPEP with detailed summaries, frequency charts, important laws and rules, and key points all pulled out. Going through these versus the actual MPEP is a huge time saver.

This dashboard page is very valuable. You’ll be able to see your progress through each chapter. The individual guidebook analysis pages are also valuable.  Each one is like a central hub for you to help you navigate the information in each chapter as quickly and easily as possible.

We have put years of work into the creation of all these different tools and spend often hundreds of hours per year keeping it all updated for you so please take advantage of them while preparing for the exam!