Posts Tagged: "outsourcing"

7 Marketing Best Practices for IP Law Firms

How should intellectual property law firms firms market their legal services to potential clients? In the golden age of attorneys before the 1977 Bates v State Bar of Arizona Supreme Court decision made lawyer advertising legal, practice marketing comprised word of mouth, actual social networking and other first person methods. But since then ads and a host of other mainstream marketing methods became available to the legal profession. So which ones should an IP firm employ in the search for new clients? Which might be advisable to avoid? How much of this should happen in house or get outsourced? Let’s take a look.

Derek Handova

May 1, 2017

Patent Search and Drafting Becomes Next Frontier for Outsourcing IP Services

The primary factors driving the trend toward increased use of IP outsourcing are cost pressures, efficiency, and staffing. Among law firm respondents, 32 percent said that cost pressures were the primary challenge their IP departments are facing today, followed by 22 percent who cited the need to do more with less, and 15 percent who said they have had a hard time recruiting and onboarding qualified IP staff. Among corporate legal departments, the breakdown was similar, though the demand for increased efficiency in their operation was on par with cost pressure as the primary motivator.

Stuart Recher

November 22, 2016

What’s the big deal: Big data in the financial services sector

Customers, myself included, are used to the customer-centric technologies experienced in other ‘digitized’ sectors like publishing or music – these have had to adapt to the digital revolution early. Customers now want that experience replicated in the FS sector. Banks, for example, are beginning to take notice, investing significant amounts of money in IT upgrades: Australia’s Commonwealth Bank invested over AUD $1.1 billion in an end-to-end IT transformation project to replace its aging core banking system and Barclays has been promoting customer-centric technologies like the mobile payments app PingIt for many years.

Jonathan Emmanuel

October 2, 2016

IP Offshoring: The Pros, Cons and Potential Cost Savings

There are two main business strategies of offshoring, called the captive form model and independent contractor model. The captive firm model is when a company hires their own employees and managers in the foreign country, train the local people and have exclusion control and responsibility over those people. The foreign entity works for the single firm and requires a very large investment and the liability falls on that firm to open the office. As a result, the firm has greater control over the people and personnel, training, and confidentiality.

Angélique McCall

May 25, 2016

Outsourcing to India: National Security Subversion & Job Loss

The fact that the outsourcing of patent searches and the preparation of patent applications violates U.S. law only makes perfect sense, particularly when you factor into consideration the requirements of 35 U.S.C. 181 (re: national security) and 35 U.S.C. 184 (re: foreign filing licenses). By openly and willingly tolerating the outsourcing of preparation work of patent applications the clear intention of 35 U.S.C. 181 is subverted. What good does a secrecy order make if the the information relative to the invention has already been sent overseas?

Gene Quinn

January 5, 2011

Reich’s Reality Doesn’t Have to Be True with Help from Commerce

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, painted a bleak picture of the future of the US economy over the next decade. The reality he paints is altogether true, unfortunate and extremely unnecessary. He concludes that “those who have lost their jobs to foreign outsourcing or labor-replacing technologies are unlikely ever to get them back. And they have little hope of finding new jobs that pay as well.” This may be true, but I know that it doesn’t have to be that way. The outsourcing of jobs is largely in violation of US export laws and that seems to me to demonstrate the reckless disregard for the American worker rampant in Washington, DC. The US government is not doing anything to enforce US export laws on the books and stop outsourcing that is in violation of US law.

Gene Quinn

April 12, 2010

The Strange Case of the Vanishing Patent Boutiques

Litigation is where the big firms and larger IP firms make their money, that much is certain. Those firms with litigation practices that also engage in patent prosecution do so typically for the purpose of keeping clients in the firm for all their patent needs. With large fees available for litigators and extreme downward pressure on patent prosecution it is no wonder many boutiques can’t keep up. Litigation attorneys move on to greener pastures leaving patent prosecution specialists scrambling to pay overhead for an office at 100 Extremely Rich Sounding Street in Crazyexpensiveville.

Gene Quinn

April 6, 2010

China: Choose Right Supplier at Right Time in Right Place

In Ancient China, the appropriate time, the right place and the union of people are three key factors in rule of the world and in a war. Today, the three factors, time, place and people also play key roles to success. This article will give you an overall perspective on how to choose a supplier in China in respect of…

Ann Lee

September 10, 2009

USPTO Ends Patent Outsourcing to India

On July 23, 2008, the United States Patent & Trademark Office published an interesting notice in the Federal Register. This particular notice announced nothing new in terms of the law, but will have an enormous impact on the way patent services are provided to many corporations and law firms. Specifically, it has finally come to the notice of the Patent…

Gene Quinn

July 29, 2008