CompareIP.com – the world’s first comparison site for IP Renewal Services

A new online service, CompareIP.com, has been launched that gives IP owners a quick, free and discreet means of comparing the charges of selected renewal payment service providers.

Anonymity

IP owners are verified by Patent Annuity Costs, the operators of the service, but their identities are not disclosed to suppliers. IP owners are only expected to share the number of registered IP rights they hold and, once they have received responses from suppliers, choose whether or not to make contact.

How it works

Users upload data from recent renewal notices or invoices (manually or using an Excel template) and choose the suppliers they would like to hear from. Suppliers upload their pricing, accompanied by a message and any supporting documents. Users can download a consolidated report and supporting documents.

Peter Rouse, director of Patent Annuity Costs said:

“CompareIP.com brings much needed transparency to the IP renewal sector and allows IP owners to make informed choices based on price and the added value services that suppliers have to offer.

We have a good mix of suppliers who have embraced the opportunity to participate and aren’t afraid of transparency. My hope is that others will also want to join in.”

The suppliers who are participating in CompareIP.com are: 42Patents; Allbright IP; Brandstock; and PAVIS.

Read the press release on EIN Presswire

US class action against CPA Global: latest developments

A year ago today, a class action was filed against CPA Global in the US alleging a "systematic practice of overbilling and inflating fees". In March this year I reported on the settlement deal struck by CPA Global involving payment of $5.6m to deal with claims of overcharging. On June 2, documents were filed on behalf of CPA Global in support of the proposed settlement which was given preliminary approval by the court on June 9; a hearing for final approval is due to take place in October.

Who is in the class?

The settlement terms are understood to benefit US patent holders with 20 or fewer non-US patent renewals within any one year and a maximum of 40 non-US patents in any one year, between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2016*. The CPA declaration, made by a consultant who used to work with CPA North America rather than by a CPA employee, refers to a total of 3,059 contracts that break down as follows:

• 1,800 governed by Jersey law and courts
• 800 governed by English law and courts
• 400 governed by Virginia law and courts
• 50 governed by New York law and courts
• 8 governed by Delaware law and courts
• 1 governed by Washington D.C. law and courts

What puzzles me, and may do others, is that the US court (Virginia) in this case can approve a deal between the parties in an action involving contracts over which they do not have jurisdiction; namely, at least, those governed by Jersey or English law and courts. Perhaps such class members will, in effect, be agreeing to amend the governing law provisions of their contracts. 

* In a supplemental briefing filed by the Plaintiff in support of the settlement, is stated:
"Settlement class members will not be releasing claims for years in which they have more than 20 foreign patent renewals."

What might class members receive?

Here are some simple assumptions, made necessary because so much important information is deliberately kept out of public records:

• an average patent holder within the class had 10 non-US renewals per year for each year of the five years – total 50 annuities paid; and
• the net settlement fund, after deductions including the claimant’s lawyers’ entitlement, may be only $4m assuming the lawyers get 25% (the settlement allows them 33%, amounting to $1,864,800 according to the draft notice to Class members) and there are other costs of $200,000 including $25,000 for the Plaintiff; and
• there are 3059 claimants within in the class (one per contract) producing a total of 152,950 annuities paid over the five-year period (an average of 30,590 annuities per year); and so
• each claimant receives $26.15 per annuity

The two annuity payments pleaded in the class action claim were alleged to be $294.52 and $311.40 more than they should have been; a total of $605.92 and an average of $302.96. If you round down the average overcharge to $300 then claimants within the class, based on the assumptions made above and the average level of overcharges claimed, would receive 8.74% of what they might have overpaid; not a great deal if my assumptions are correct.

Is a bad deal better than no deal?

It is clearly in the interests of the Plaintiff and Defendants to settle this action.  The Plaintiff (who will get $25,000) and Plaintiff’s lawyers (who will get $1,864,800 or less) will be well rewarded and CPA Global will, on the basis of assumptions which I am happy to be shown to be incorrect, have settled 3,059 claims very cheaply indeed.

The Virginia Court has apparently decided, at least on a preliminary basis, that it has jurisdiction over contracts that the parties agreed should be governed by the laws of other countries. Is anyone, I wonder, going to address this issue and will any of the class members be willing to question the deal offered to them?

where does this leave referrers?

In the CPA Global declaration, it is stated that all clients covered by the 3,059 contracts were referred to CPA Global by law firms and patent agents (this is in fact part of the definition of the class). Where does this settlement leave such firms? Should they not be looking into this case, in detail, advising their existing and prospective referral clients of the issues and risks?

Those who receive referral fees will presumably have to weigh up the reputational consequences and potential liabilities arising if the individuals they referred to CPA Global were found to have been overcharged.

Note: this post has undergone some minor corrective and supplemental amendments since first published.

Collaboration with Positive Purchasing to launch new PatentPlus program

I'm delighted to announce my collaboration with Positive Purchasing, the specialist procurement and negotiation training and consultancy business, for our new PatentPlus program. This new venture should significantly reduce the amount patent annuity holders pay when it comes to renewal.

PatentPlus is a high impact, results-based program which can deliver immediate and significant cost savings, and increase category spend value, at no risk to the client’s business. The program is split into two phases: Diagnostic and Delivery.

During Phase 1, Diagnostic, the PatentPlus team of legal and procurement experts will review an organisation's existing patent renewal spend with suppliers, analyze and report on opportunities identified for cost reduction and improvements in patent renewal management. A best practice training workshop will also equip company teams to better manage these suppliers moving forward.

For clients choosing to proceed to Phase 2, Delivery, the PatentPlus team will support implementation of these benefits into the client organization and, where appropriate, establish new contracts with the client’s providers.

If you are interested in finding out how much you could save, contact me for advice.

Find out more about PatentPlus

Read the full press release on the Positive Purchasing website

Download a factsheet on PatentPlus (PDF)

Follow Positive Purchasing on Twitter: @pos_purchasing

What effect have the overcharging claims against CPA Global had on the sector?

In an earlier article, I discussed the US Class Action against CPA Global, the world’s largest patent annuity payment services provider, involving allegations of overcharging. In this article, I will probe a little into the impact this has on a commoditized yet stubbornly opaque service sector.

‘Ghostbusters’

The spectre of hidden charges has been haunting this sector for some time, in large part thanks to Dennemeyer, whose US leadership team have been acting as industry Ghostbusters with webinars probing a murky world of unexplained charges. Dennemeyer certainly have an axe to grind, and who can blame them, if competitors have been indeed been making super profits from clients ignorant of the extent of apparent overcharges.

How long has this been going on?

The settlement agreed by CPA Global in the current US Class Action, brought by Run Them Sweet LLC in the summer of 2016, covers a five-year period to the end of December 2016; though this may have more to do with applicable rules governing limitation on claims than anything else. The alleged overcharging, by its nature concealed from clients, could have been going on for far longer; in some jurisdictions, this could mean that time does not begin to run for limitation purposes until a client becomes aware of a potential claim.

What of the rest?

Schadenfreude will likely abound among CPA Global’s competitors who may hope that further litigation will follow brought by claimants not covered by the very limited class defined in the current US action. However, CPA may not be the only suppliers to feel the sting of litigation and at least one other US Class Action may even now be rumbling down the track. Where does this leave patent holders who may be wondering whether they have been overcharged or whether by moving to another supplier they might end up in a similar situation?

Marketing speak

Anyone researching leading suppliers will be met with an array of marketing puff that cannot be independently verified. These include, for example, references to: “significant cost-savings” and “minimizing expenses” (Anaqua); ‘‘cost efficiency” and “no hidden or additional fees” (IPAN); “cost effectively” and “no hidden costs” (Pavis); “unmatched fee transparency” and “competitive agent fees” (Clarivate). CPI (Computer Packages Inc.) go so far as to assert that theirs is “the only transparent annuity service” and that they are “at least 10% less expensive (in total cost) than the other major annuity services.”  What is a patent holder to make of all this?

Market opacity and procurement discipline

Resistant as the legal services sector is to the involvement of procurement, perhaps because it places less emphasis on relationships and more on factors such as performance and price, the annuity payment sector is one where using a tender process is essential. This is primarily because only in the context of a properly structured tender process will it be possible to have the right questions asked and answered so that apples can be compared with apples.  Understandably perhaps, suppliers refuse to disclose essential information other in the context of a confidential tender process.

Help is at hand

My firm has teamed up with procurement industry expert Jonathan O’Brien and his Positive Purchasing firm to create the first dedicated service for patent holders who want to learn how to tackle this somewhat tricky IP service sector. Our Patent Plus service is available now to patent holders looking for value going forward, as well as clarity regarding historical charging. 

Contact me for advice

CPA Global agrees to pay $5.6m to settle US class action alleging overcharging

CPA Global Limited, the world’s largest intellectual property management company, has recently settled a class action case in the US, where it was alleged that it had been overcharging for patent management fees. The alleged overcharging occurred by “inflating certain fees and outright inventing others.” CPA has now settled this case out of court for $5.6 million.

The terms of settlement were arrived at after mediation, with a 64-page Court document filed in the District Court of Eastern Virginia on 13 March 2017. Once approved by the Court, the class action, which commenced on 29 June last year, will end. The Court’s approval process will take a further four months during which time potential claimants will be contacted and given the option to take the money or opt out.

The settlement only benefits US patent holders, with a maximum of 40 non-US patents renewed in any one year, who between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2016 used CPA Global to pay their annuities. Class members who do not opt out will be compensated from what remains from a $5.6m fund to be provided by CPA. It must also provide last known contact information for current and past clients in the defined class; subject to the Court’s approval, as much as 33% of the settlement fund may be paid to the claimant’s lawyers and $25,000 to the claimant.

Many would commend CPA for resolving the class action before it reached trial and for keeping the class definition so restricted and the settlement fund so small.  Once the case had become a ‘rocket docket’ to be tried by end July 2017, the urgency to settle must have been all the greater and doubtless this is what the rocket docket process is designed to encourage.  Was this simple expediency aimed at limiting legal and other costs of litigation or was it a deliberate choice to prevent potentially embarrassing evidence being presented in open Court and, worse still, a judgment finding that CPA had indeed been engaged in systematic overcharging?

On the one hand, settlement makes sense for CPA, especially given rumours that there will be a change in ownership within the next six months. On the other, why would CPA pass on the opportunity to have the claims of overcharging tested by a Court in a case which pleaded only two instances of overcharging and involved a claimant with a very small portfolio?  As one might expect, the Court document records, at length, that the settlement in no way amounts to an admission of any of the claims in the action and that CPA refutes those claims completely.

CPA may have dodged this bullet but there will almost certainly be more to follow, not least because US law firms will doubtless be offering their services to patent holders outside the prescribed class with larger portfolios and potentially much larger claims. This is not going to go away and CPA can expect further claims in the US and on their home ground in Jersey, UK.

Dennemeyer, the second largest patent annuity payment provider, has run several webinars in which it has presented carefully sanitized data pointing to egregious levels of overcharging by some providers. Patent holders have been given enough cause to question whether they are in fact paying considerably more than the service fee agreed with their provider. 

For those willing to look under the covers, my firm offers a ‘no saving, no charge’ service that includes advising on and negotiating terms with their existing providers or with an alternate provider. 

Contact me for advice

Damned if you do – Damned if you don’t

Overcharging for patent annuities - the dilemma facing in-house counsel

The world’s largest provider of patent annuity payment services, CPA Global, is the subject of a Class Action in the US in which it is alleged it has been overcharging its clients. 

On 9 February 2017, Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review posted an article entitled ‘CPA Global seeks settlement after claims it overcharged patent fees’ in which it was reported as follows:

‘According to a January 30 order, the parties engaged in successful mediation, have agreed in principle to settlement and have signed a memorandum of understanding. In order for the parties to finalise the settlement, the district court granted their request to stay all deadlines for 30 days and cancel the case hearing, which was initially scheduled for February 17.

The case is stayed until March 1.’

One hesitates to believe that an organization of the stature, scale and longevity of CPA Global could possibly be engaged in overcharging of clients and yet one must consider the possibility that the inflation of charges may have been, and may indeed remain, systemic. 

Meanwhile, Dennemeyer, the world’s second largest provider of patent annuity payment services, has been running webinars and posted videos reporting overcharging on a massive scale by competitors. 

In March 2015 Brandstock, one of the larger European players in the IP services sector, published a report on findings from more than 100 benchmarking projects conducted on behalf of owners of some of the world’s largest patent and trademark portfolios entitled:

‘150 Million US$ Savings – How Far Can You Go? The why, what and how of agent benchmarking and trademark and patent cost reduction’3. In conclusions set out on page 6 of the report, it was stated:

‘Only from a selected group of countries had all agents been applying the correct official fees. In certain regions, many agents applied hefty mark-ups of 30 to 50% and more. Again

a strong North to South and West to East increase was identified. In addition, some providers of global services such as patent annuities made up for their ever-decreasing handling fees with decades of applying incorrect exchange rates, thereby overcharging owners of large patent portfolios by anything from 13 to 35% and resulting in millions of US$ in damages.’

Damned if you do

This information places in-house counsel at risk of being held responsible for any overcharging that took place ‘on their watch’. Yet how should counsel have discovered the overcharging for themselves?

Damned if you don’t

Now that the information is out, are in-house counsel now at risk of being held responsible for not taking steps to address the risk and recover any past overpayments?

In my webinar delivered via BrightTALK on 15 February I explain the basic components of patent annuities and consider the claims against CPA Global. My firm is able to provide expert help to patent holders who are concerned to ensure that they are paying the right fees for their patent annuities.

Watch the webinar

Contact me for advice