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Somehow I have the feeling that like in medical the new technology will not drive down the cost for the customers of the patent lawyers.

sjg007 7y ago
Well it will make patent attorneys more productive which may mean they can take on more customers at different prices or even allow smaller firms etc... Patents get really interesting when litigated because 40% of patents are found to be invalid.
- patentatt 7y ago
  Not disputing your number, but wherever you got it, it’s likely “40% of challenged patents” that are invalid. Only a relatively small subset of patents are challenged. As an aside; patent attorney productivity is an elusive concept. Or any attorney, at that. And that is because every single attorney only cares about one metric: billable hours. Not volume of work produced, not client wins, but billable hours. Efficiency to an attorney means lower effort to bill more hours. Quality is not a concern, only hours. I cannot stress enough how traditional concepts of efficiency or success or effectiveness don’t apply to lawyers. It’s a deeply flawed industry. And in patent work, it’s difficult for clients to determine if the lawyer is doing a good job or not. Concrete results are many years down the road, and often the in-house attorneys supervising aren’t qualified or given enough time to evaluate ongoing prosecution efforts across a large portfolio.
  - anticensor 7y ago
    You could amend payment function to be sublinearly increasing to cope for hours inflation.
rayiner 7y ago
Any cost savings likely will not be very noticeable, in part because the technology doesn't do very much. It is directed at finding prior art, classifying inventions, etc. That work already is often outsourced overseas. The stuff that makes patent legal services expensive (e.g. having an engineer explain how the invention works so a patent can be drafted) remains quite outside the reach of existing computer technology.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cgy1 7y ago
  There are some tools out there that can help with the drafting of patent applications too. I've seen tools that can predict the art unit the patent might end up, catch errors in patent applications being drafted, and even tools that can draft a simple preliminary written description for a set of patent claims.
patentatt 7y ago
There’s a lot of good ideas to reduce costs for patentees, but this article doesn’t really touch on any of them
jedberg 7y ago
At first, probably not. Until that one firm comes in using the technology to undercut everyone else's prices. In fact, I believe Atrium[0] is doing exactly that. I'm not sure if their prices are lower right now, but since they built up around technology, they certainly have that lever available to them. [0] https://www.atrium.co https://www.atrium.co
cgy1 7y ago
Actually fees have actually been fairly flat in patent prosecution over the recent years. Unlike other legal work, it's very common for the work in patent prosecution to be performed for fixed fees (e.g., $10k/patent application). Thus regardless of the number of hours billed by the attorney, they will not be paid for the hours worked that exceeds the fixed fee they're charging for the task. As such, patent attorneys do have extra incentives to use these emerging AI tools to help them become more efficient because it allows them to stay below the fixed fees they're charging for clients.
- pkaye 7y ago
  Terminology question... is patent prosecution same as a patent lawsuit?
  - cgy1 7y ago
    Patent prosecution is the process of drafting the patent application and working with the patent office to get a patent issued. So it's the work done to secure a patent before the patent is asserted in a lawsuit.
    - pkaye 7y ago
      Is that the same for criminal prosecution?

sjg007 7y ago

Well it will make patent attorneys more productive which may mean they can take on more customers at different prices or even allow smaller firms etc... Patents get really interesting when litigated because 40% of patents are found to be invalid.

patentatt 7y ago
Not disputing your number, but wherever you got it, it’s likely “40% of challenged patents” that are invalid. Only a relatively small subset of patents are challenged. As an aside; patent attorney productivity is an elusive concept. Or any attorney, at that. And that is because every single attorney only cares about one metric: billable hours. Not volume of work produced, not client wins, but billable hours. Efficiency to an attorney means lower effort to bill more hours. Quality is not a concern, only hours. I cannot stress enough how traditional concepts of efficiency or success or effectiveness don’t apply to lawyers. It’s a deeply flawed industry. And in patent work, it’s difficult for clients to determine if the lawyer is doing a good job or not. Concrete results are many years down the road, and often the in-house attorneys supervising aren’t qualified or given enough time to evaluate ongoing prosecution efforts across a large portfolio.
- anticensor 7y ago
  You could amend payment function to be sublinearly increasing to cope for hours inflation.

rayiner 7y ago

Any cost savings likely will not be very noticeable, in part because the technology doesn't do very much. It is directed at finding prior art, classifying inventions, etc. That work already is often outsourced overseas. The stuff that makes patent legal services expensive (e.g. having an engineer explain how the invention works so a patent can be drafted) remains quite outside the reach of existing computer technology.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cgy1 7y ago
There are some tools out there that can help with the drafting of patent applications too. I've seen tools that can predict the art unit the patent might end up, catch errors in patent applications being drafted, and even tools that can draft a simple preliminary written description for a set of patent claims.

patentatt 7y ago

There’s a lot of good ideas to reduce costs for patentees, but this article doesn’t really touch on any of them

jedberg 7y ago

At first, probably not. Until that one firm comes in using the technology to undercut everyone else's prices. In fact, I believe Atrium[0] is doing exactly that. I'm not sure if their prices are lower right now, but since they built up around technology, they certainly have that lever available to them. [0] https://www.atrium.co https://www.atrium.co

cgy1 7y ago

Actually fees have actually been fairly flat in patent prosecution over the recent years. Unlike other legal work, it's very common for the work in patent prosecution to be performed for fixed fees (e.g., $10k/patent application). Thus regardless of the number of hours billed by the attorney, they will not be paid for the hours worked that exceeds the fixed fee they're charging for the task. As such, patent attorneys do have extra incentives to use these emerging AI tools to help them become more efficient because it allows them to stay below the fixed fees they're charging for clients.

pkaye 7y ago
Terminology question... is patent prosecution same as a patent lawsuit?
- cgy1 7y ago
  Patent prosecution is the process of drafting the patent application and working with the patent office to get a patent issued. So it's the work done to secure a patent before the patent is asserted in a lawsuit.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    Is that the same for criminal prosecution?