In-House Counsel

Cisco?s guidelines, 70 pages of them, for patent preparation and prosecution

By Rees Morrison

Striving to codify its best practices for ?prep and prosc,? willing to take time to train lawyers and scrutinize processes, setting the stage for offshoring some of its work, Cisco?s patent group maintains what must be a sophisticated and complete guideline. At 70 pages, this form of knowledge management is probably maintained online ? it would make an excellent wiki ? and undoubtedly it memorializes years and years of experience. It is a good practice for legal managers to set down their practices and procedures for activities that are often repeated with minor variations.

All that I heard about this, from a recent conference, was the length of the guidelines and that they proscribe some billing practices by law firms, notably charging for phone calls, docketing, and ?administrative services.? My comments, therefore, extrapolate from a narrow base.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on April 22, 2009 (boomark / email).