Services: In addition to patent searches and the preparation and prosecution of patents, our firm provides many other legal services.
Our clients engage us for legal opinion work for a wide range of purposes, including:
freedom to practice a particular technology;
non-infringement of a patent asserted by an adversary;
infringement of a client's patent by a competitor.
Clients also engage us for transactional work with others, such as negotiating a license or settling an assertion of infringement prior to litigation.
In addition to our patent expertise, our firm has extensive experience and is actively engaged in other areas of intellectual property, such as trademark registration practice, trademark licensing and software licensing.
Deliverables and Fees: In all our engagements, we devote care in the initial consultation with the client to characterize the desired services and deliverables as precisely as possible. Whenever possible, we will offer the services for a fixed fee so that you can make an informed decision regarding engagement of our firm within your budget. When it is not possible to offer the services for a pre-determined fee, we will provide an estimate for the services and work with you to set an upper limit for all charges, so there are no surprises.
By setting our fees with you in this manner, we are able to provide you services that are primarily "value-billed": our services are charged to you according to the value of the work product and result you obtain rather than according to our hourly billing rates. When we must bill by the hour, our rates (presently $350 per hour) are highly competitive for quality intellectual property work.
Costs: For all costs we incur on your behalf, such as photocopying, faxing or long distance telephone calls, we bill you at our actual cost or at a low, standard unit charge, depending on the item. We do not intend to profit from costs we incur on your behalf.