Law departments, take note of non-traditional law firm offerings (CPA)

Previous posts mentioned Faegre & Benson’s Client Technology Services (Oct. 21, 2005), Nextra’s discovery specialty (Sept. 13, 2005), British law firms’ on-line offerings (Oct. 17, 2005), and ADR/CMS’s litigation management assistance (Sept. 13, 2005) – all specialized departures from traditional law firm offerings and economic models. Computer Patent Annuities Limited Partnership (CPA), provides a yet another set of alternative services.

CPA, a partnership owned by an international group of patent and trademark attorneys, has approximately 1,000 staff and 60,000 clients(Conspectus, Oct. 2005 at 6 ). Along with handling the typical functions of obtaining patents and trademarks, CPA performs trademark searching, trademark watching, domain name management, and design protection. (See my post of Nov. 28, 2005 on IP trading on-line.)

An interesting capability marketed by CPA involves mapping the patent spending and holdings of competitors against a client’s spending and holdings.