The Business of Patent Law Archives

Why One Should Not Bill By The Hour

Today’s Dilbert cartoon explains why one should not bill by the hour.

How To Be A Good Client

I recently had a conversation about bad clients with another practitioner and it got me thinking about good clients and bad ones. Being a good client is somewhat of an art, akin to being a good manager or coach.

Basic common sense will get you a long way sometimes, but many people seem to forget that.

Greedy Lawyers and Finding The Right Stuff to Patent

I recently had a meeting with a client who was talking about another patent attorney with whom he still has a relationship, and the client said that he was just drowning in bills from the attorney. The client shook his head and said that he thought the attorney sat around dreaming up things to bill when the attorney was running low on money.

Looking at the situation from the outside, the attorney had effectively choked off his income stream by squeezing the client too hard. He probably was paid in full for the recent bills, but the client took new business elsewhere.

How To Save Costs on Patent Drafting

There are many ways to save costs on patent drafting. You can do a search beforehand; you can work on the idea with someone else so that you can explain it well and identify the new elements; you can have some good drawings prepared.

Even if you do all of that, there is one critical thing you need to do: ask your patent attorney/agent how fast they can type. If you are paying by the hour, and even if you are not, you don’t want someone who types at 5 words per minute to pound out a 20 page patent application.

Fast Turnaround

I really try to keep my turnaround times for patent applications as low as possible, and there are many reasons why, but the biggest reason is that I can turn out higher quality work than if I did it any other way.

Obviously, clients like quick turnaround because they know that I am working on their project. However, I think there is an optimum time to take for writing a patent application. Finishing the application too fast or too slow can have its effect on patent quality.