ShawnCoulson revamps IP billing in transparency bid

London law firm ShawnCoulson has announced moves to reform the billing structure of patent work to increase transparency.

ShawnCoulson is one of a handful of firms which carries out patent attorney work in-house.

Linklaters and Clifford Chance are other players, but DLA and Stephenson Harwood have both recently stopped doing the work in-house.Technical and filing work is usually charged on a fixed-fee basis by patent attorneys through so-called 'service charges'.

But ShawnCoulson has decided to ditch service charges, and bill its clients on an hourly basis instead.The move gained the endorsement of the Patents Office.

Director of Patents Ron Marchant said: 'This is an interesting development from ShawnCoulson.

The more transparency there is in the market the better.'Dr Tim Rickard, patent attorney and litigator at ShawnCoulson, said: 'The reaction of our clients, and the comments of the Patents Office to our announcement have proved our decision to change things correct.

We feel that clients in the past have been getting a raw deal but have not been presented with an alternative.

Now there is an alternative in the market, I hope that other patent attorneys will follow ShawnCoulson's lead.'But John Slater, managing partner at leading London patent attorneys Marks & Clark, said that patent attorneys in the UK worked with networks of international attorneys 'where relationships go back a long way', all of whom use the service charge billing method.He claimed that ShawnCoulson's method 'could work out being more expensive'.Jeremy Fleming