Top Patently-O Subscribers

Patent

Although most Patently-O readers regularly visit website, over 20,000 subscribe to our free e-mail service available through Google’s Feedburner.  With over 5,000 different domains represented, most subscribers come from businesses with only a small number of patent law professionals.  Here are a couple of lists of organizations with the most Patently-O email subscribers:

Law Firms:

  1. Fish & Richardson
  2. Morrison Foerster
  3. WilmerHale
  4. Harness Dickey
  5. Finnegan
  6. KLGates
  7. Foley Lardner
  8. McDermott Will & Emery
  9. Cooley
  10. JonesDay
  11. Kirkland Ellis
  12. Knobbe Martens
  13. Alston Bird
  14. RopesGray

Non Law Firm:

  1. USPTO
  2. GE
  3. Qualcomm
  4. Samsung
  5. Novartis
  6. Pfizer
  7. Microsoft
  8. HP
  9. LGE
  10. Dow
  11. Intellectual Ventures
  12. Dr. Reddys
  13. Huawei
  14. P&G
  15. Intel
  16. Sony

The following chart shows Patently-O usage statistics by geographic location (city).  I believe that the chart is fairly representative of US patent-law-professional activity.

USMapUsage

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34 thoughts on “Top Patently-O Subscribers”

  1. 8

    In some circles, it may be perceived that Patently-O is “known” as “leaning” towards position X1, philosophy X2, or social/political policies X3.

    Imagine now that you are a managing partner at a prominent patent law firm with an overwhelming number of clients or at least a few very high paying clients who are DECIDEDLY against, position X1, philosophy X2, or social/political policies X3.

    Imagine the shock of seeing your firm’s name listed as one of the top subscribers to Patently-O, not so much surprise that your associates are all keeping up on the goings and doings of Patently-O but at the idea that your client base will see your firm name associated with the position/philosophy/social-policial policies they are against, and moreover, as a “top” subscriber… the implication being “top subscriber to those ideas”.

    PatentBob may be joking, but I could understand fully if he were completely serious, or at least suspect some others out there may actually react in that way. The question is will anyone or any firm actually unsubscribe?

    Of course Dennis will know by now whether or not this really does bother people/firms, but if he publishes this list again in a few months we will would be able to see if people/firms really are disturbed by this or not. If all the firms are relatively in the same position that will tell us something, and if not, THAT will tell us something too.

    It would be interesting to see a firm name drop off the list completely… although the chances of that are likely very small.

    1. 8.1

      your client base will see your firm name associated with the position/philosophy/social-policial policies they are against, and moreover, as a “top” subscriber… the implication being “top subscriber to those ideas”.

      Besides that, there’s the whole red hair thing. Can you really trust those people?

    2. 8.2

      Way too much worrying about something so indirect and professionally restrictive. Reminds me of a jerk corporate GC [now in prison] who barred his patent attorneys from active AIPLA participation because they might say or vote for something controversial, and wanted to send only patent-clueless professional lobbyists instead.

      For a better, more direct, example, some law firm partners were vocal supporters of interference practice for many years even though none of their major clients were! [They were not representing any small inventors pro bono in interferences either.] They felt perfectly free to represent their own interests and views anyway.

    3. 8.3

      Reading or subscribing to a blog implies nothing about any degree of agreement with the content of a blog.

  2. 7

    Dennis, was the density graphic generated solely from the email-list or from IP addresses from page requests? I don’t think it would be easy to generate from the former.

    1. 6.1

      Many of the attorneys out there just send the actual work back to offices in flyover country.

  4. 5

    I subscribe with my company email address, but I don’t post with that address as Dennis and MM are in cahoots.

    1. 5.1

      The paranoia in this one is hilarious.

      “cahoots” lol. Either that or MM just recently had to contact D regarding anon’s ever worsening behavior at the time. Could go either way.

  6. 3

    Not surprisingly, the list of law firms with the most subscribers for the timely patent law CLE on this blog is a list of top quality patent law firms.

    1. 3.1

      Serious question Paul: What are your criteria in determining a “top quality” law firm?

      Attorney count/firm? (I hope not)
      Most office locations? (I hope not)
      Suit win-rate/firm? (I hope not)
      Suit income/firm? (I hope not)

      Suit win-rate/attorney? (now we’re talking)
      Suit income/attorney? (not we’re talking)

      Some other criteria?

      1. 3.1.1

        General reputations for major patent litigation, for which those firms are frequently retained. [Not necessarily for prep & prosection, if that was your question?]
        Keeping up with, and understanding, the latest patent law developments seems to be of less interest to some of those doing only ex parte PTO work, and the fact that the PTO has no MCLE requirements does not help. E.g., several years ago when the PTO changed the requirements for appeal briefs (with ample advance notice) approximately 45% were rejected as non-compliant in the first few months thereafter, presumably from patent attorneys and agents that were not even keeping up with PTO rule changes.

        1. 3.1.1.1

          Hi Paul, I believe the comment about appeal brief rejections may be off base and has little to do with the ascribed reason. At that same time, certain art units were notorious for serially rejecting briefs for made-up offences in order to (as many of us suspect) game timelines and avoid having to answer in timely fashion.

          E.g., my guys had numerous briefs serially rejected for:
          (i) failing to adequately describe the invention in the claim summary of section; followed by rejection for
          (ii) providing too much descriptive text for the claim “summary”;

          where the difference between the summary in (i) and (ii) was less than about 20 additional words.

          These were not outliers – specious (and serial) rejections of briefs just like this were rampant, until the (then) BPAI took the matter of initial/administrative review into the hands of their own paralegals.

          Whereupon the problem of rejected briefs magically evaporated.

    2. 3.2

      Paul,

      Here is an objective study of top patent quality from law firms, which may or may not align with your idea of “top quality patent law firms” (but at least uses the same five words, plus “from”): . It is a little dated, but is the newest I have found.

      The top 5 “quality” patent firms don’t even appear on the list above:
      1. Lee & Hayes
      2. Trask Britt
      3. Marger Johnson
      4. (tie) Blakely Sokoloff
      4. (tie) Turocy & Watson (now Amin, Turocy & Watson)

      And, of the top-20 in quality, only Fish (#14) and Knobbe (#16) appear above.

      Size of a firm and number of offices does not equate to “quality.” It is a disservice to talented, hard-working professionals that you would equate size/advertising budget and recognizability with quality.

      1. 3.2.1

        I guess my hypertext skills leave something to be desired, but at least you can click the linked text and find the list.

        1. 3.2.2.1

          AAA JJ,

          If you click the link, the ranking methodology is provided at the bottom of the list.

          Aptos

          1. 3.2.2.1.1

            Aptos,

            Thanks. Based on my admittedly brief review of the criteria (i.e. the likelihood that the patent’s maintenance fees will be paid throughout the entire term), I can’t say I’m impressed with their rankings. Just my opinion of course.

  7. 2

    The map reminds me of a scene from an early Matthew Broderick movie, just at the time the WOPR decides it’s better to play tic-tac-toe, or to perhaps not play at all.

  8. 1

    I had no idea you would use our information in this manner. I am immediately unsubscribing from your blog. I do not want my information used like this and do not want knowledge of my employer to be used as such.

      1. 1.2.1

        It is an interesting wrinkle – perhaps Prof Hricik could weigh in on the ethics of “client-name data use” as a form of advertising (which is what the article appears to be).

        This is not legal services, so I do not think that the ABA model rule 7.2 is implicated.

        I also think that Prof. Crouch may be covered by waiver in the e-mail service sign-up (but have not checked to verify).

        1. 1.2.1.1

          Thanks Anon.

          For the post, I took care to only name entities with a large number of Patently-O readers so as to largely avoid the problem. That said, I don’t think that there is much downside to being identified by your boss as a subscriber to the Patently-O email distribution list.

          1. 1.2.1.1.1

            Now wondering if the opposite might happen….

            Fly-On-Wall-Reporting from a Jones, Day office:

            “WHAT?! What do you mean, “But McDermott ranked higher than we did?”

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