The opportunities for trademark/copyright and other “soft IP” attorneys are fewer and far between.There are several reasons why.
First, the trademark, copyright, and licensing fields are not nearly as complex as the patent field, and they do not require a specialized scientific or technical background. In fact, many corporate attorneys are comfortable doing trademark work at a basic level.
Second, as the dot-com frenzy has slowed and many domain name disputes (where unscrupulous people were registering as domain names the trademarks of many companies) are more under control, there has been a slowdown in trademark work as compared to 1998 through 2000.
Third, while there are some high-profile exceptions to this rule and some firms have extremely sophisticated trademark/copyright practices, very few firms in the United States have separate trademark and copyright licensing departments. Many patent attorneys may be called upon to do both trademark and copyright work in addition to whatever their field of specialization is in the patent field. In addition, some people perceive that trademark and copyright licensing work is less intellectually taxing than doing patent prosecution. Many patent attorneys like doing copyright and trademark work because it is a break of sorts from doing straight patent prosecution. Accordingly, many firms and corporations like to offer patent attorneys a wider variety of work to keep them happy.