> as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume
Really? I wouldn't view that as a positive unless we're talking about law students I guess.
Really? I wouldn't view that as a positive unless we're talking about law students I guess.
Also, after talking with someone who had obtained a few patents (his work did not nearly reflect the calibre of an inventor), the expensive and convoluted process of filing for a patent means that the uniqueness of an invention may not be the most critical factor when obtaining one. I observed this when I worked at some companies hwo actively discouraged patenting because they had no resources to maintain and defend patents.
And I'm only going to view them positively if they are genuinely novel. If I can trivially find prior art or its another of those "with a computer" software patents, it's going to be a very big red flag.
Of course, this is just my own anecdote, and you may very well be right in the broader scale.
Also, why would it be a big red flag if you can find prior art? Whether or not there is prior art probably has very little to do with how capable of a developer the individual is.
If I can find prior art that is effectively their patent, it shows to me that they were engaged in patenting something that shouldn't be patented. I have strong personal feelings about that, and I do not much want to work with someone that believes that every idea that _can_ be patented _should_ be patented.
With that said, there are many other reasons I would reject a candidate before I would reject them over this. If anything, with the relatively small number of resumes that I get on a weekly basis, anyone having any patents on their resume is going to raise a red flag that I am going to poke at more. It also gives me another topic to engage the candidate on, and on one occasion that lead to a conversation that made me vote to hire the candidate.