Fear & Loathing on the IP Trail: DFW

by: Luke Barbin, CEO

Great trip to Dallas-Ft. Worth this week to visits with customers.  Key takeaways from IP folks I met with:

1) Spreading the Love: Outside Counsel are being Forced to Compensate for Search Quality and Inconsistency through Project Diversification

Single searcher approach of most competitors has led to more and more outsourcing of the same projects simultaneously to multiple search firms to get diversity of researchers and diversity of results.  Side note: while separate researchers at separate firms end up with measurably different results, the separation of researchers fails to benefit from collaboration between the researchers that can be achieved by multiple researchers under the same roof. The remaining question is does this approach really deliver its intended results or just cost more?

2) Current State of Available Patent Research Tools: Disillusionment

Available research tools continue to disappoint customers.  Overpriced annual seats that are hard for outside counsel to pass through on a pro rata basis to clients create an access problem.  Moreover, high learning curves and failures to help users get to on point results quick leave many lawyers wanting more in the little billable time they have available to either conduct research or review search results.

3) To Offshore or Not to Offshore, that is the Question

More and more firms are refusing to offshore research projects, particularly patentability searches, due to export control regulations, and more and more firms are simply wanting to buy local or support US-based companies.

More travails from the trail soon,

#relentlessresearch