What Happened to Foreign Language Document Review Oroject in Us
27 April 2011 [updating our Jan 2011 mail service]
The global "patent artillery wars"
Ah, litigation. Truly the sincerest course of flattery. If you have been following all the IP litigation out there the terminal few months you know that the nigh recent battle pits Apple who has gone after Samsung for violating 10 iPhone and iPad-related patents in its Android-based smartphones and Milky way Tab. And Samsung has countersued, starting off with lawsuits in Europe and Asia, with U.S. based lawsuits about to exist filed.
The subtext is obvious. Apple to Samsung: y'all are an unexpectedly persistent competitor, and we don't much like that. Only for both companies, legal fights are nothing out of the ordinary. Since the beginning of 2008 the tally of U.S. cases in which either side has been a party reads: Samsung 259, Apple 260. And if you are a contract attorney who has been in the document review game long enough you have probably been in a few of these litigations … conflicts checks not withstanding.
Information technology is a strategy. For Apple tree, another tool in the tool box to bank check the rise of its biggest challenger in tablets, and the dominant user of Android, the rival operating system to Apple tree's own iOS. Apple tree's fear: Samsung'due south proven ability to accelerate penetration into mid-marketplace segments in both developed and emerging economies, beyond all manner of consumer electronics.
The "patent arms wars" have reached a new level of intensity. It'south the globalization of smartphone patent disputes. Because the nigh aggressive corporate asset these days is your IP arsenal and it has afflicted the subjective certificate review market. The financial crises has "helped" in its ain style, forcing many companies to await at IP commercialization and protection. Simply no surprise here. As we accept shifted from a labor-driven economic system to a cognition-based economy the intangible assets produced past a more highly skilled and services-orientated workforce have emerged as the virtually powerful asset grade, overtaking traditional capital assets such equally existent property, found and equipment. A lovely setting for a battleground.
As we have indicated in numerous posts over the concluding year, foreign language document reviews accept dominated the U.S. contract attorney marketplace. Foreign language document reviews were 62% of our postings 2 years ago, and 74% of our postings over the last 12 months. And a big reason is this enormous growth of IP litigation which crosses multiple countries and languages and is normally quite long in duration and almost e'er leads to extensive document reviews. And you tin't do it in Republic of india. Patent/IP prosecution, yes. Multi-language litigations, no.
Information technology is all about the convergence of technology markets — nearly conspicuously, the clash of mobile communications and personal calculating in the smartphone — which has greatly added to the complexity as well as the potential for disharmonize as the prime battle for market share. There are potentially more than 250,000 patents involved in a smartphone, according to RPX (ane of the new era's middlemen who buy and license patents wholesale; for more most what they practise click here ).
Immature companies that haven't had a chance to amass their own stocks of patents, or those moving on to new technology turf, are the ones near at risk. In this case, that may even include a company every bit mature equally Apple tree, which ventured into new territory with the iPhone. It has fewer than 4,000 patents; a quarter of those were awarded since the start of final year, suggesting that it has been pushing difficult to increment its IP holdings as it moves beyond its traditional calculating base. Even Google is calorie-free in the IP department which is why information technology was bidding $900 million to buy the Nortel patent pool (Nortel being in defalcation and its assets under bid, every bit many of us worked through that document review) as a defense. If Google did not buy the patents, they could well end up with a competitor, or in the easily of patent trolls who are going to become out and commencement trouble, trolls being buyers who acquire patents purely to start legal actions (for those who have not worked on a patent troll instance some background ).
There are now fights confronting Apple in half-dozen courts, over 6 countries, involving 50+ patents. Add to that twoscore+ cases filed against Android — virtually all of them against companies that have built devices using the software. There are at to the lowest degree 18 non-English language languages involved.
Side note : to stay on superlative of all of this IP litigation (the whys and wherefores, etc.) we e'er turn to our colleague Florian Mueller and his blog Foss Patents and follow him on Twitter .
Oh, global M&A is upward, too
This is not to discount the enormous affect on non-English certificate review by the surge by U.S. companies to do large strategic deal-making which has boosted global mergers and acquisitions, and merely the unproblematic consequence of normal-course-of-business global transactions. The U.Due south. now accounts for almost half of global M&A action, up from virtually a third last twelvemonth. Nine of the x biggest deals this year have been struck in the U.s., almost all leading to big, non-English document reviews, deals involving companies from Brazil, China, Germany, India, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Russia — to name just a few.
Goad Repository Systems (links at the top of the right column on this page) was ane of the first to provide multi-language search and review for e-discovery and large-scale document review. We spoke with John Tredennick, Catalyst founder and CEO, who explained: "We take seen corporations and their law firms dealing with this spike in electronic discovery containing multiple languages. I tin attribute this to The World is Apartment era whereby corporations work globally and communicate across many languages. Today, when documents need to exist reviewed, they usually comprise multiple languages — the languages in which the companies practise business whether information technology be intellectual property, mergers & acquisitions, or just every solar day business processes".
And so just in the DC, LA and NYC document review markets you have multiple linguistic communication document reviews involving companies such as Aisin, Ansa, Apple tree, AstraZeneca, Avon, Gitti Gidiyor, HTC, LG Electronics, Merck, Nissan, Pfizer, Inquiry in Motility, Samsung, Sony, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Toshiba – to proper name merely a few.
For the agencies staffing these projects it has meant existence quick and very flexible. Jeremy Michalson of Diamond Personnel in NYC says of this spike in language projects: "Many of these CJK projects [Chinese-Japanese-Korean] are a result of the deluge of Asia deals past companies in the U.South. and western Europe. Facing sluggish economies many companies are looking "afar" for growth and what has helped are these cross-border deals. You lot see it daily in just a cursory look at the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. Almost all of these deals require regulatory exam — hence non-English document reviews in many cases. We've been involved in many of these deals because nosotros have a deep bench of multi-lingual attorneys that extends nationwide. But what is different from the by — especially the IP reviews — is the numbers of foreign language reviewers per projection has also become larger, thus creating the need to expand our searches nationally."
It is the same in D.C. Lori DiCesare, President and CEO of Legal Placements, Inc. (LPI) told u.s.a.: "In 2010, and again in 2011, nosotros have seen a remarkable surge in strange language reviews. This need had been fueled largely by FCPA and other government investigations. And so the IP work spiked. Just because LPI's staffing team engage in "creative" recruiting to locate the appropriate legal professionals to meet this surge we have staffed a myriad of strange language reviews across all subject field matters. It can exist nerve racking because the non-English language language projects seem to require more than reviewers of late, but we know the market".
And in that location has been a change in the nature of the work, too
Aye, a lot more work for contract attorneys fluent in languages other than English, and lots of work for e-discovery companies that handle non-English language document collection, processing and review. Staffing agencies all the same handle the largest percentage of strange linguistic communication certificate review. Only eastward-discovery companies have aggressively moved into this market on their ain or by teaming with staffing agencies. It is why many of the CJK job posts you run into on the Posse List are coming from these companies.
And there has been a demand for attorneys versed in mediation/alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") projects, especially IP. This is because businesses mired in IP disputes are increasingly reluctant to expend ever-dwindling resources on protection and enforcement of their IP rights. E-discovery in ADR is somewhat of a "new new" thing. A conventional litigation is long and costly, whereas ADR is relatively inexpensive and fast. In the U.South. (according to IPWatchDog) the boilerplate cost of patent litigation is $2M, trademark litigation is $600K, and other types of IP litigation average betwixt $500K and $800K. This, of course, does not include the price of an appeal, which may add another $2M to patent litigation. The time involved is maybe more amazing: the average IP litigation lasts 3 years. Add an additional year for an appeal. ADR tin can take equally little as 5 or half-dozen months.
And there has been growing use of contract attorneys in preliminary IP due diligence: (i) what IP rights the company owns or uses; (ii) how robust are these rights; and (three) how unassailable are the company'due south claims to these rights. Information technology is why you lot have seen so many Posse Listing task posts requiring IP lawyers at all levels and why nosotros created a national Intellectual Property job listserv wherein we post IP work across the country. As Jeremy Michalson of Diamond Personnel said (quoted in a higher place) the need for these projects has created the demand to expand the search beyond the immediate geographic expanse of the document review piece of work for appropriate attorneys. [To join any of our job lists just click hither .]
Meanwhile, in Europe …
And this has as well led to a surge of in-country litigation and compliance reviews in Europe. Our sis company Project Counsel has completed 6 document reviews in the past twelvemonth with 3 more at present underway in Brussels, Lisbon, and London covering IP litigation, debt restructuring/due diligence, and Yard&A piece of work … plus a myriad of specialized legal enquiry and translation projects. We'll accept a detailed post this Fri on the surge in certificate review work and other outsourced legal piece of work beyond Europe and the primary players.
And next week: we start our serial on the engineering science backside the processing and review of strange language documents — encoding, format, script, language, text analytics, sound, etc. — with our video interviews of the people behind ZyLAB .
Source: http://www.theposselist.com/2011/04/27/the-surge-in-foreign-language-document-review-projects/
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