would you quit a steady job in ip prosecution to pursue litigation, because the work's pretty mundane?

Depends at what you’re looking for long term. Litigation will give you thrill and possibly more money. But immense risk and lack of work life balance. Prosecution will get mundane but it will always be steady and you’ll have comparatively more work life balance. also, very hard to grow with just prosecution given undercutting at niche firms. You will need to expand slightly e.g. anti-counterfeiting, domain name disputes etc. If you’re looking for thrill of litigation but on the prosecution side, look for contentious actions such as rectifications before IPD of DHC or the up and coming IPDs like Madras HC

Bump

Do an MBA and branch into IP management. This is an excellent area with a lot of scope. You can sub-specialise in innovation and tech, brand management etc. There is an oversupply of IP lawyers but an under supply of IP managers. Trust me.

There's no job for ip management in India. I've worked 6y in house and never came across an IP management job role. However, there's a clear cut demand for this role outside India, especially Europe. They have clearly distinguished between ip counsel and ip manager. While ip counsel is mostly into strategising portfolio growth, ip managers are technically stronger than ip counsels (ex RnD/inventors mostly) who have hands on experience working with ip counsels/attorneys. They're responsible for advising business on the need for invention harvesting and portfolio shift or management. Personally, I have never found this job interesting maybe because I had never been on the other side of the window or wasn't really interested in doing the labs.