• Your complete satisfaction is our number one priority- We work harder!
• We become a key part of your execution team by leveraging our extensive firsthand understanding of the unique IP needs of Individual inventors, small business, law firm, and Fortune 500 companies.
• You get "right-sized" patent protection that is customized fit your unique, and ever changing needs.  In some cases, for example, a simple "patent pending" may be most effective for a gorilla marketing campaign. In others we may need to build a patent wall around your crown jewel.  , we have a unique formula that delivers the exact balance between cost and quality that effectively achieves your IP goals, affordably.
• You receive customized cost reduction opportunities that reflect the wide diversity of situations and needs that exist for small businesses and individuals.
• The patent protection that we win for you is optimized for actual commercial value.  We do not sacrifice IP strength (cloaked in legal jargon) for speed when high quality is your goal.
  
• If we like your invention or technology, we will tap into our many funding and marketing connections to determine if 3rd party investment or commercialization opportunities exist.
  
• Your innovations, business planning and execution are enhanced by our unique combination of multidisciplinary capabilities including IP development, in-house patent searching, protection, strategy, marketing, and deep technology support uniquely enable us to efficiently understand and align the work product to your needs as a whole.
• We put our exceptional technical and legal breadth and depth in practical and theoretical knowledge to work for you.
• We encourage our you to be involved at each step of the process when you want a "hands on" approach.
• We continuously analyze the latest court decisions affecting future litigation and patent drafting/prosecution, and adjust our "best practices" accordingly.  This is especially critical in fast changing legal areas such as software and business methods.
  
• We are competent to assess your patent, business, and exit strategy goals, and align our work product to optimally satisfy their complex, uncertain, and often conflicting requirements.  Most law firms wear "blinders" and simply patent what (narrow) idea you give them, and the result is a patent the falls short of protecting your business model in the real-world.
  
• Our strategy is customized for each client's risk/reward tolerance in the context of their budget and current legal trends.
• We do what ever it takes to meet deadlines and promised delivery dates.
  
• We provide all the foregoing, and more in a timely and affordable manner.

What kind of patent law firm is best for me?

In the fast paced, opportunistic environment we live in today a patent is, more than ever, the most effective protection against theft of your invention. There are multiple levels of uncertainty throughout the patent acquisition and enforcement process. The value of a patent in many ways depends on how well it holds up in litigation (for infringement/validity) and against the analysis of fellow lawyers in the case of sale or licensing revenue. It is for this reason you do not want to choose a patent law firm based solely on the "lowest bidder," yet because of the significant costs involved in patent acquisition (esp. in building a portfolio) one can not generally afford the more expensive law firms that often invest more attention to elegant décor and perks than increasing a patent's true value. The higher overhead forces artificially high billing rates, which, to stay profitable, forces, even some of the best, patent attorneys to churn out product so fast that many critical errors and oversights are inevitably made. These errors do not usually interfere with getting a patent awarded, but may invalidate or severely reduce the patent's scope in litigation, or permit potential licensees excess maneuvering room to engineer around the patent and avoid paying licensing fees. Given that the strength of a patent can depend on a single errant (three letter) word, a profit-driven "cookie cutter" patent drafting and prosecution practice can be disastrous.  Too many times we receive transfer clients who, even after paying top money at top tier patent law firms, find that they were just another "drop in the bucket" and their patent was written simplistically, the prosecution just "kicks the can endlessly down the road", and the even when the patent is finally issued, the claims were narrowed so much (always with the client out of the loop) that the issued patent had little to no commercial value.

It is not well known, but many, if not most, patent attorneys (non-partners) only keep about 30% of the hourly rate they are billing you, the rest goes to paying the law firm's overhead and profits. Generally, overhead expenses and patent law firm profits add little, or no, value to a patent. On the contrary, as discussed above, overhead tends to reduce the value of the final product because the patent attorney has many disincentives to giving you a better product. To be profitable, the typical patent attorney will avoid doing anything that requires more time if the client will not readily notice the lack of action. Moreover, the law firm's economic incentive is to avoid reviewing their attorney's work quality unless the client is complaining about it. Thus, the combination of both the attorney and law firm's economic incentives results in the attorney doing the minimal work required to keep their (often unsophisticated) client happy. Unfortunately, the client's patent rights can be compromised, or even lost, because of this intense pressure to "cut corners." To compound the problem, some, if not most, high overhead IP law firms afford to offer lower cost patents to price sensitive clients by having less experienced attorneys actually do the work for the more experienced attorney you thought was doing it for you. For these, and many other reasons, the best value is usually found with law firms that have a lower operating overhead and are priced somewhere in between the higher and lower price ranges. However, be aware that high overhead (typically large) patent law firms tend not to prefer small startup companies or individual inventors because of the extra time required to "hold hands" with pressure to charge a lower fees. They usually prefer large, high-volume clients that can afford their higher rates and tend to not closely track work quality because no single case is typically important. In contrast, closely held companies and individuals tend to value each invention highly, and tend to require high quality service but at an affordable cost.

How is Bay Area IP's fee approach to your advantage?

Bay Area IP believes that high quality product and service does not have come at a high price if operating overhead is kept under control and inefficiencies in the patent preparation/prosecution process are reduced if not eliminated. We can afford to work harder, and we do.

By extensive use of automation, avoiding expensive office space and redundant staff, and other efficiency boosting means, we are able to better put your limited budget to work directly towards adding value to the final product and our personalized service. In general, work quality depends almost solely on the practitioner working for you, and not the number of conference rooms, docketing/accounting/IT/International departments, secretaries, or law firm perks and vacation houses. With much less of your money spent on paying for our overhead, we can afford to do what we enjoy most- creating win-win situations by spending the necessary time to achieve high quality product and service to continually earn your return business.

Our volume practice and high efficiency affords us the luxury of appreciating how a close working relationship with you can be efficiently leveraged to drive our work most effectively towards your end game.

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