I've written several times about patent lawyers who acquire and assert their own patents. Now I'm going to use the blog to ask for folks' opinions and thoughts on this issue, and what the policies should be at law firms, and beyond.
In my last post, I wrote about a court case involving a law firm that has had rules in their contracts since 1999 regarding patent experts getting or asserting their own patents. I've also written about Scott Harris, a former Fish & Richardson attorney who became embroiled in a serious conflict with his firm after getting his own patents which were then sold and used to sue Google, a firm client, and several other IP lawyers filing their own patent lawsuits.
It's clear there are widely varying policies (or lack thereof) around this issue. It's possible that some law firms have instituted policies recently, perhaps in direct response to the Harris case.
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