Content area
Full Text
PATENT LAW MUST BE THE only legal sector that discourages more business than it pursues.
Unlike their ambulance-chasing cousins, intellectual property (IP) lawyers routinely point potential clients to less-expensive resources or advise against seeking patents, copyrights and trademarks altogether.
They can afford to be so magnanimous. The demand for IP counsel in Arkansas is rising, and there are only 20 licensed patent lawyers and seven patent agents in the state. Patent agents are licensed by the federal patent office bar, and patent lawyers are licensed both by the patent office and a state bar.
Local estimates for the IP market range from $750,000-$1 million in northwest Arkansas and $1.7 million$2.5 million statewide. But that does not include in-house IP work at corporations or out-of-state IP business done by large firms such as Wright Lindsey & Jennings LLP in Little Rock. With three patent lawyers, the Wright firm operates the largest Arkansas-based IP practice group.
The firm declined to say what percentage of its business is IPrelated.
From filing to approval, one local 18- to 24-month patent process costs $7,000-$10,000. The cost rises if complex disciplines such as nanotechnology are involved. In a major market like Dallas, the base price is closer to $15,000$20,000 per patent.
IP litigation is billed locally from $150-$250 per hour, and there's plenty of trademark, copyright, licensing and franchise work to supplement patent filings.
Robert R. Keegan is a patent lawyer with the Fayetteville office of Head Johnson & Kachigan, an IP boutique based in Tulsa. Keegan said when he opened his original practice in Fayetteville in 1973, it was a rarity to see an Arkansas-based patent appear in The Official Gazette of the Patent Office once the industry's premier trade publication.
But Keegan, 74, said times have changed.
According to...