Passing the Buck on Prior Art Searching
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!
