Tuesday 21 September 2010

York: Legal Research and Market Research

The Station from the Great Wall of York
As our generous host, Eileen Morrow has already reported, there was an all too infrequent gathering of SOLO IP lawyers yesterday in York. The excuse was an excellent training session on WESTLAW IP given by Paul Mullally. He showed us how to find the content we needed to argue our cases before the EPO or in the UK, how to get to use their highly efficient Current Awareness that finds stuff behind the Times pay wall and from all those sources we don't have time to check. This is all accessible and affordable due to our special subscription but you need to join at this time of year (before December) so get in touch quickly to be as smart as biglaw.

There were lots of goodies from The Yorkshire Food Company to keep the conversation flowing. A few highlights:
  • Will we be able to get more disputes settled in the Patents County Court with its new procedure exciting new judge and costs cap. Does that cap apply to existing cases. We could not see why it should not or at least for steps undertaken after 1 October 2010. Discovery before that could be arguable. What do you think?
  • Open Innovation and Innovation by Brainstorming. How can maverick IP lawyers solve the problems.
  • The miserable number of European Patent Applications emerging from Yorkshire companies (200 pa was mooted). 
  • Why do German entrepreneurs see greater value in patents than UK business
  • Getting messages across to clients in blogs and press releases
  • Using Software as a Service - I need a link here for the time recording and billing iPhone app
  • Charging and the need to record time even if the bills are all fixed fees agreed in advance
  • CPD collecting - did a plug here for Ipso Jure which has excellent patent coverage and will give you quality points and notes for a modest annual subscription. Contact Peter to sign up
Homeward bound
and the sun shone outside and we were all impressed with the Yorsolicitor office and hope that lots of bio science entrepreneurs will realise what an excellent resource is there to guide them economically and efficiently and with the wisdom, initiative and experience which is the hallmark of the SOLO IP lawyer.



3 comments:

  1. Great to meet up in York.

    There are two SAAS solutions that I have looked at for time recording and billing. Harvest and FreshBooks. Both have iphone apps and also widgets that work with Windows and Mac OS. Here are the links. They also integrate with other SAAS solutions.

    http://www.getharvest.com/
    http://www.freshbooks.com/

    Regards
    Nick White
    Tangible IP

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  2. Make sure you take a look at Paymo time tracking and invoicing . it's a SaaS app provider, it has an iphone app and desktop widgets.

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  3. I use Freshbooks for SAAS solutions and find them very easy to use.. there are more out there - the other one I was interested in was from Sweden called Invoicemachine .. Freshbooks seems more tried and tested and cocst are comparable

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