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Comment by Jake232 | Hacker News Reader

First year associates at the law firm I use charge over $500/hr. Senior lawyers/partner cost well over $1,200/hour in 2021 at many of the largest / most successful firms now.

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OK, you don't need any of those. Certainly you need lawyers to actually write the IPR & conduct it, but nothing starts until someone finds that killer prior art.

I find the profession prior art search firms; global, CPA, Cardinal, Nordic, etc. are pretty garbage. I always use one for my cases, but I, the attorney actually writing the IPR/invalidity contentions, have generally found the best art. The search firms get hung up on superficial similarities. So I wouldn't prevent your attorneys from doing some digging on their own.

But I wholeheartedly agree that you shouldn't start down the IPR road before you find the killer art (for all potential claims). I've seen to many instances of people rushing to file an IPR and then later finding better art.

I wrote a post about the search firms, then I saw this, sorry.

Yeah, a lot of the firms are garbage, but I remember a couple being pretty decent.

I feel that's the case in many professions like plumber or car repair that people are reluctant or unable to DYI, whose services aren't going to be needed often, but that are accompanied by acute pain when they're needed. That tends to make people cost insensitive because they need pain relief, they have few points of comparison, and don't anticipate needing the same service again soon.

Sorry to say, but I'm not sure the IP law profession is different... I probably have worked with about a dozen attorneys hired by my employer to file patents on my behalf, and there were two lawyers that stood out a lot. They understood the inventions, what we claimed to set them apart from prior art, and produced filings that were relatively brief and to the point. The rest of them didn't really get the stuff, sent us draft filings that made me cringe because they were shallow copy-paste jobs, etc. If you're one of the better lawyers out there, I hope your clients are rewarding you appropriately for it!

Lawyers use very short abbreviations for everything. I love that about them. (This does relate to what you said; be patient!)

"pros" = "patent prosecution" that's what you're talking about. Writing the patent & getting it through the PTO.

"lit" - "litigation" A lit lawyer is quite different from a pros. They can switch back & forth, but it's a big switch.

"crim" - "criminal". You hear this one on the TV series "Billions" ("I want to be the head of Crim!")

"3L" - a third-year law student

Probably a lot of others I don't know.

One of the pros lawyers that Oracle used was a total copy-paste douchebag, like you said. At Packeteer we had an awesome guy, whom I brought in once a quarter to brainstorm our 2-3 filings that quarter (we did not have a big budget). I don't think he's doing pros anymore; it gets repetitive.

Most big companies want to use big law firms, regardless of whether their people are any good. As an independent lawyer you have to be really good to compete for that business.

I wonder how many attorneys have a good understanding of prior art for patents in computing.

Judges, juries, and the patent office don't seem to.

And as Sparkfun points out, this patent is nonsense and should not have been granted in the first place.

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