Baker Botts uses intellectual property management tools to help clients develop systems to manage the life cycle of their company’s intellectual property worldwide. There is more to intellectual property than just filing patents and trademarks. Among the spectrum of services we offer are:

Threat Assessment:

It is increasingly common for companies to receive letters threatening legal action because of alleged patent or trademark infringement. We can help design procedures to respond to these letters. For example, we have devised web-based tools that categorize threats and provide a framework to assess and manage the risks presented by such “nastygrams”—significantly lightening the load on in-house legal departments. Additionally, our deep understanding of our clients’ sectors enables us to leverage our know-how to minimize the impact on companies’ businesses.

Audits and Categorization:

Our lawyers can help implement inventor education programs so a company’s scientists and engineers better understand how to protect new ideas. We also review a client’s technology and perform a gap analysis or identify areas that could be protected more effectively. We can also compare the product mix with current and proposed trademarks to design filing and enforcement strategies. This analysis allows us to identify strengths and weaknesses in the current process and to benchmark an intellectual property portfolio against those of competitors.

Patent Mining: 

Often companies have more valuable intellectual property assets than they realize. Our lawyers can undertake a quantitative and qualitative review of an existing patent portfolio to identify potentially infringed or underutilized patents. Following a mining effort, we will create a licensing and enforcement program that could include contingent recovery or other alternative fee engagements.

Valuation:

Our lawyers can help determine the economic value of a client’s intellectual property assets, either with the assistance of the company’s own personnel or with consultants we have used in the past. We have long-standing relationships with the major consulting firms and often work closely with them to perform such valuations.

Baker Botts has a simple philosophy to manage intellectual property assets: put our best practices in our clients’ hands. We have incorporated our experience into sophisticated but intuitive Web-based tools for online collaboration. These tools keep clients fully informed about intellectual property initiatives and threats at all times. From patent and trademark procurement to threat assessment, patent mining, licensing and other critical processes, Baker Botts delivers state-of-the-art service to manage intellectual property.