By Christopher Buccafusco and Jeanne Curtis ( October 5, 2018, 12:58 PM EDT) -- In some states, interior designers must have six years of education and apprenticeships to legally practice their calling. To work as a professional hair braider, people need a cosmetology degree, which requires one thousand hours of education, even though cosmetology programs do not typically teach hair braiding. Similarly, to assist clients with prosecuting design patents, people also need certain educational credentials. Unbelievably, though, those credentials have nothing to do with design. Instead, design patent prosecutors must have the same science and engineering credentials that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requires of utility patent prosecutors. As we argue in a paper to be published in the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, these rules are irrational, costly and biased against women's access to a valuable part of the legal profession....