Passing the Buck on Prior Art Searching
We all know that prior art searching is becoming more and more important as patents and patent litigation become more and more expensive. We also know that there are zillions of places you can go to find relevant prior art. Some have referred to the process as finding a "needle in a haystack." And, we all know that searchers are willing to pay fees to search prior art databases if the content is valuable. But, one thing that we didn't know, and learned recently, is that search professionals in law firms sometimes find it difficult to cost justify the fee for annual search subscriptions.
At first we were surprised that the subscription search model wouldn't be actively embraced by ALL law firms; a lower per-search fee that could be spread across all clients. That is, of course before we began chatting with law firms about their billing processes. Now, we understand. You see, lawyers, paralegals and search professionals bill their time to clients. Pretty obvious. And, the nature of the billing process is that each minute must be associated with a specific client. Also pretty obvious. And, an annual search subscription cannot be easily broken out and charged to specific clients because each client has different needs??some clients don't even NEED prior art searching. Yes, yes... also obvious. Then why did we only have subscription-based pricing for law firms? THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION!
Anyway, now that we understand the obvious, we have come up with an obvious solution... a special transaction-based contract for law firms (or anyone else that would benefit from this approach). As of now, rather than only offering the annual subscription based model to law firms (which some still prefer), we have a contract that enables firms to pay on a per-search and per-download basis. This makes life easier for law firms, easier for their clients, and easier for us. Everyone is happy!
