My Patent Practice Group

 

4^th Dimension IP

A different kind of patent law group

www.4d-ip.com 

“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” – Abraham Lincoln

 

4^th Dimension IP (4D-IP) is composed of U.S.-born patent practitioners who now reside in Israel.  All of us have worked for large Israeli patent firms, where we observed that many clients were fooled into thinking that if they payed high fees to a firm with many employees, it necessarily followed that good work was being done on their behalf.  The impetus for forming 4D-IP was the belief that we can provide our clients with the best service possible, period, in the most cost-effective manner.  Put differently, we don’t aim to be the biggest, just the best, and we won’t bankrupt your company in the process.

 

We achieve this in several ways.  First and foremost, we are all Ivy League-educated native English speakers with advanced scientific degrees.  Each of us has been practicing for several years, and we have worked in industry in capacities that enable us to understand the role of intellectual property in a company’s ongoing business.  We are experienced in patent drafting and prosecution; prior art searching and patentability assessment; IP portfolio strategy and management; and patent infringement and invalidity analysis, in the context of oppositions, litigation, due diligence, and commercial transactions.  

 

What this means for our clients is that we view their patent needs not in a vacuum, but in the context of their overall business.  When we prepare patent applications, our goal is to obtain commercially meaningful patents for our clients, that taken together help our clients meet their business objectives.  When we provide freedom to operate opinions or help our clients design around others’ patents, our focus is to ensure that our clients can bring what they believe will be a winning product to the marketplace.

No less importantly, in addition to being admitted to practice in Israel, most of IIPA’s principals are admitted to practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office.  We take the unique nature of U.S. patent practice into account from the outset, which enables us to reduce application pendency, and to increase the likelihood of our clients receiving commercially valuable patents, relative to typical Israeli patent firms.  We also take advantage of the USPTO’s electronic filing system to file directly with the USPTO, thus reducing or eliminating the high cost of working with U.S. associates.  When necessary, we interview U.S. Examiners ourselves to advance our clients’ patent applications.  And we keep abreast of developments in U.S. law through attendance at conferences, participation in on-line seminars and workshops, and voracious blog reading. 

Beyond the U.S. and Israel, we can manage our clients’ entire patent portfolios through our foreign associates.  Here too, in contrast to prevalent local practice – which dictates that foreign associates are chosen in accordance with reciprocal work arrangements – we choose our foreign associates on the basis of the value they provide.  And our bills for foreign patent prosecution reflect actual work performed by us, not a gratuitous 25% mark-up.  With respect to patent renewals, we are happy to provide this service ourselves, but we recommend that clients engage the services of one of the large renewal companies, as this is usually significantly less expensive than working through individual agents.

 

Because we’re small, we can be flexible in our pricing structures.  So while our hourly billing rates are competitive with those of other Israeli patent practitioners, and far less than the rates charged by U.S.-based practitioners with comparable experience, we can also accommodate clients who prefer fixed-fee per project or other billing arrangements.  

We also keep overhead low.  We’ve found not only that we don’t need tower offices with views of the sea and mahogany desks to do good work, but that low overhead significantly reduces our clients’ costs. 

If you think 4D-IP might be a good match for your company’s needs, please contact one of our professionals:  

Daniel Feigelson

Moshe Van Dyke

Shalom Lampert

Our mailing address is 7 Oppenheimer St., 2^nd Floor, Rehovot, 76701 ISRAEL