Patent Buddy Ranks Patent Attorneys

Patent Buddy is a new service that provides data (obtained from the USPTO) on registered patent attorneys and their employment histories since 2001. It claims to have data on 38,669 attorneys from ~13,000 organizations. You can search by name, registration #, organization, and geographic location. (You can search by Canadian city and postal code but not province, although it appears that provinces eventually will be added.)

Each individual is given an experience ranking, although it's unclear how this is calculated. You can also see their employment history, patents (although none I viewed listed any) and co-workers. Each organization is ranked by growth curve and experience. Again... details are sketchy about how the rankings are calculated.

More information is available in an article in Finance and Commerce, a Minneapolis-based business journal.

It's a very interesting start-up with a lot of potential... I think it would be especially useful to independent inventors and small firms shopping for a patent firm, and new patent attorneys job hunting.