- Japan-based business operations; Yen-based billing.
- Japanese paralegal and clerical staff.
- Proprietary, custom-built U.S. patent application docketing, reporting, deadline-tracking, and prior-art inventorying system, all in Japanese.
- Costs controlled: Legal-practice environment focused on prosecution. Patent-prosecution fees are at patent agent’s, not lawyer’s, rates. Trademark and other IP legal work apart from patent prosecution also conducted, at reasonable rates.
U.S. patent practice centers on the claims, on the language of the claims. While poorly written, poorly translated—even very poorly translated—claims can sometimes find allowance if such claims are sufficiently narrow in scope, they are unlikely to have value as the basis of licensable, enforceable patent rights, instead only proving to be straw patents for bundling into a defensive package.