Patent Law

Dennis Kennedy writes in the March 2008 print issue of the ABA Journal:

Clients increasingly look to lawyers who know their business and industry well, and a common client wish is that their lawyers alert them to issues in advance, and not simply react when the client calls.

All of this has generated a new interest in something called competitive intelligence. CI addresses ways to get information you can use to be more effective in competing for business and serving clients. If you monitor court filings for your clients? names, you might alert them to a filing and send a pleading well before they hear it elsewhere. You?re being helpful?and more likely to get the new assignment. If you monitor news items containing your firm?s name, you won?t be surprised when a client mentions the story he or she read about your firm.

While sophisticated, expensive and impressive CI tools are available, let?s look at two free tools that will give you a good taste of what CI is and how it can help you. Both tools fall into the category of alerts.

The first tool is e-mail alerts. An e-mail alert is like a customized e-mail newsletter on the subject of your choice.  A great example is Google Alerts.

If your e-mail inbox is already overflowing from other sources, then you will want to experiment with another type of free alert tool known as an RSS feed. RSS stands for really simple syndication.

These tools are very effective for patent infringement investigations as well.  Read how to set up these alerts and the rest of the article here.