I was curious, so I briefly looked at job listings on usajobs (the govt job site), and rough descriptions of the organization of patent examiners. They are div

I was curious, so I briefly looked at job listings on usajobs (the govt job site), and rough descriptions of the organization of patent examiners. They are divided by disciplines, most or all of which require 4 year degrees and some experience in the discipline. "Software" would fall under electrical engineering, there is no specific computer science discipline, I imagine in part because there are no software patents, only "on a computer" patents. I also noted that they append "I.T." to their jobs that would seem to have a focus on software. The thing that mostly struck me is that these are four year technical/science degree requirements, and these people are the first line of anything you might call "defense" against aggressive patent lawyers. Yes, a patent is touched by more than one kind of person in the PTO, including lawyers, but it doesn't sound very adversarial to me. Observations apropos of nothing in particular.