The findings come from Intellevate, a firm that offers support
services to intellectual property lawyers, such as prior art
searching and patent proofreading, from facilities in Minneapolis
and India.
Proofreading is an important last step in the process of
obtaining a patent because it can identify errors that can affect
the patent’s enforceability. Intellevate announced last Friday that
its Indian office has just proofread its 5,000th issued patent.
According to Leon Steinberg, Intellevate’s CEO: “We find errors
in every issued patent we review. Many of the errors are
unimportant, but others, such as missing claim, can impair the
enforceability of the patent. We identify the errors so that our
clients can decide if they want to file a Certificate of
Correction.”
Intellevate reported that Certificates of Correction were filed
for an estimated 34% of the proofread patents.
Most law firms consider proofreading as a necessary step to
reduce their malpractice exposure. Sophisticated corporations view
proofreading as the final step in controlling the quality of their
patents and ensuring enforceability. However, proofreading is time
consuming and can be expensive. It involves checking the issued
patent, which can be hundreds of pages long, against the filed
application and all amendments.
In addition to being time consuming and usually costly, it is
often a lacklustre task that many law firms and legal departments
would rather not have to take on. For this reason, Intellevate says
proofreading is the perfect activity to perform off-shore.
“Intellevate has developed proprietary tools that automate part
of the proofreading process and has built a team of legal
assistants in India who are thoroughly trained and specialise in
proofreading services,” said Steinberg. “These capabilities,
combined with the lower wage rates in India, allow Intellevate to
provide clients a vastly superior work product at a fraction of the
cost of proofreading on-shore.”
