Patent assertion entities exist who will “partner” with you to enforce your patent, but they act as “middlemen” who raise the price of patent assertion. The typical company of this sort will finance your lawsuit and return half of “profit” to you – after attorneys’ fees. Once you consider the attorney charges, whether hourly or contingent, you can be lucky to get 30% of total recovery. And someone else will control the conduct of the litigation and the decisions, without allowing your interests, as the patent owner, to control.
Directly hiring a contingency patent law firm, like our firm, is more cost-effective, and our duty is to you. We have never charged a client more than half of money recovered, even counting litigation costs, and we do not plan to ever do so. If we assemble a team with lawyers in another firm, we will quote you one contingency rate covering everyone. If you need litigation financing, we can help you find it.
Finally, watch out for “cut rate” contingency patent firms. Remember, you get what you pay for. The goal of contingent enforcement in patent cases is to have the lawyer’s incentive match that of the client. You want your patent lawyer’s best advice, not recommendations colored by the lawyer’s private interests that you don’t share. Some contingency-fee rates or practices used by other firms give the lawyer too much incentive to “sell out” cheaply, for example. We charge a fair fee, thoughtfully structured, to allow us to provide quality services.
In a few instances, we have worked for hourly rates on patent-litigation matters, including defense of patent assertions. Please inquire if such arrangements are of interest.
