Patent Agency Lets Women Shine in Court While Big Law Sends Men

Farheena Rasheed spent five years as a Big Law patent litigator, writing many briefs for appeals her colleagues—mostly men— to argue before the nation’s top patent court.

She never once presented a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit before leaving private practice. During a subsequent clerkship at the court, she watched attorneys from the Patent and Trademark Office stand up for arguments.

And many of them were women.

Eventually that exposure led her to a job in the agency’s solicitor’s office, where over the past 10 years she argued dozens of Federal Circuit cases ...