Law Firm Superbrand

I was interested to read in Lawweek that Eversheds is now the third placed law firm in the 2008 Superbrands survey, and that Linklaters has now overtaken Clifford Chance as the UK law firm with the strongest brand. I am curious to know what Linklaters and Eversheds have been doing to achieve their positions. Any ideas?
Following Jeremy's comment I am reposting the link here: http://www.legalweek.com/Articles/1100086/Links+tops+law+firms+in+'08+Superbrands+survey.html
If it still fails to work, then copying and pasting the link into your browser should work. It's worth looking at because there are a number of other related articles which may be of interest.

How much is your practice worth?

The Scottish Daily Record reports that

"Scotland's Murgitroyd Group have acquired rival European patent and trademark attorney practice Kennedys Patent Agency Limited in a £3.4million deal.

Under the terms of the agreement, £2.4million is being paid in cash, with the remainder being paid over three years.

Kennedys, who have additional offices in Aberdeen and Newcastle, were founded in 1997 by David Kennedy and Neil McKechnie.

With the exception of Kennedy and McKechnie, all of the firm's patent and trademark attorneys are remaining with the company.

Murgitroyd say the deal will boost their patent and trademark practices".

This raises interesting issues concerning putting a price on an IP practice -- an option that a sole practitioner may want to consider when either implementing an exit strategy or going in with another firm. Obviously it's not possible to know the details that drove the valuation in this instance, but it would be good to hear from readers who have had to put a value on their practices recently.

Legal Services Reforms

Nearly a year ago I attended Professor Stephen Mayson’s talk at the College of Law, entitled CATALYST, CATACLYSM OR CATASTROPHE? http://www.the2020group.com/cms/document/stephen_mayson_speech.pdf He focused on the likely impact of the legal services reforms on law firms, and the talk was incredibly thought provoking. Points that have stuck in my mind are that the market will lose as many as half the sole practices that currently exist – as many as 4,000 - and that merging with others in order to grow in size is what may be necessary for survival and success in the new climate, even for niche firms.
In the meantime the Solicitors Regulation Authority - through the new Code of Conduct which came into effect on 1 July – has introduced a number of provisions designed to ensure that law firms are run as businesses – it being recognized that to survive in the new climate, law firms must be well-run, and financially aware.
There will undoubtedly be an impact on trade mark and patent attorneys too under the Legal Services reforms – especially once the multi disciplinary rules are brought into effect. So, perhaps when we next meet as a group the Legal Services Reforms might be a useful topic on which to have a speaker. We could then follow it with a discussion about the likely impact on us small niche firms? Anyone interested?

The Joys of E-Filing the UK Way

The profession is impatiently waiting for the new and improved electronic trademark filing system. One member, who was suffering posted this to the group:

I tried to file on on-line trade mark application yesterday evening, having failed to do it from the office because our firewall seems to be set so as to prohibit access to anything you might actually need for work. I navigated to the form on the Patent Office (you know what I mean) web site, and up came an error message telling me I had to use Internet Explorer!
I dashed off a quick complaint to the Webmaster, pointing out that not everyone in the world has sold his or her soul to Microsoft and a growing number of eccentrics use Firefox - some people even go so far as to use Apple products (non-PCs, perhaps?). When I think about it, requiring people to use IE amounts to forcing them to use Windows, and it is not the government's job to help Microsoft achieve world
domination.

I wondered whether anyone else in this group has faced similar
problems.

Mike Hewlett at the Patent Office replied first thing this morning to tell me that the online form will be replaced in April, and acknowledging its limitations at present, which was very decent of him. Perhaps others who feel as I do would like to lobby for the next version to be made a bit more compatible.

Meanwhile back in Newport they are planning their post Easter Workshops to
launch the new system. Details here. Book your
place by email to Online TM3workshops. So see you on Easter Tuesday in London with your Mac Air Book or your Linux Portable and lets see. For those who need Easter hols you can go to Newport

ITMA CPD Lectures on Film

Dave Musker of Jenkins drew a good crowd to his lecture on Design Law this evening and I wanted to highlight that these lectures are videoed and available for download at http://itma.healthymedia.co.uk/.

The National Phase of a PCT

For patent attorney members of the group, one suggested route to exchanging work occurs on entry into the national phase of a PCT application. For most clients this is an activity of high administrative effort and significant financial input and there is little opportunity to demonstrate any expertise.

At the EPO, they would like us to conform applications with European practice by amending the claims to refer to the closest prior art in the extended international search report, introducing reference numerals and addressing the objections. I do that for my direct clients and find that it has singularly little effect on the term for a response from the EPO. I noted recently that I had some cases where I had entered the European phase 2 years ago on this basis and still I had had no feedback. Now delay in incurring substantial expense is usually something welcome to an entrepreneur, especially if he has a granted UK patent already, so filing clients are not particularly unhappy about this situation. Of course, those asking for freedom to operate opinions are less calm about it. As a result, therefore, no overseas client ever instructs any professional work at this stage of proceedings.

The rise in EPO fees on 1 April 2008 makes me consider the best way of dealing with this business and I was intrigued to see the initiative made by KeyIP to take the professional element out of nationalisation and treat it as a purely administrative exercise.

This seems like a pretty good idea especially when I see that my profile of bad debts is almost exclusively attributable to this type of work. I am therefore not surprised to see that it is a central feature of their service that payment is required in advance.

The Independent Voice

At our gathering in London last night, Duncan Bucknell shared his insights withers onto the future of global patent litigation in the pharmaceutical field. You might have thought that the trademarks of vision as would be snoring but his vigour and commercial analysis of the issues kept is interested. In the subsequent lively discussion, we did identify that one unique selling point that solo practitioners have is their ability to show to the world a really recognizable position. Duncan's strength lay in his advance planning of the type of work and clients that he wished to focus on and then making sure that he did things, including giving away copious amounts of free relevant analysis on his website -things like his scorecards- that showed he did have the expertise and ability to help them. We all agreed that it is not enough to say you can do things-that has to be some way of demonstrating it.

Duncan acknowledged that he was a disciple of David Maister a marketing guru who also provides a lot of free information.

Another solo strength lies in being able to adopt ideas and implement plans quickly. None of those tedious law firm approval processes, marketing committees and budget approvals. A little chat with yourself and all is full steam ahead. I am sure that many of us will be pondering this morning whether we should put client guarantees on our bills giving the opportunity for the client to pay what he thinks work is worth if it is not happy with the total. The obligation on the client is to explain in full why he was not completely satisfied with the value received. This is something which allows a client to feel confident about what may be considered to be some sort of risk in taking advice from a smaller organisation.

A big thank you to CIPA for making their hall available to us and, of course, to Duncan for making the time in his schedule.