>>11706766>>11706781Patent attorney here, though not a US one.
Unless you are defending clients in criminal cases you do a let of preparations to avoid court and other conflicts, especially in business and IPR law.
- advice clients on IPR strategy
- analyse potentials for conflicts, and advice accordingly (IPR insurance etc)
- draft and prosecute patent applications - a major part of the workload of a patent attorney
- analyse possible infringement cases and handle accordingly
Mostly we prefer NOT to take conflicts to court, it is costly, time consuming and causes a lot of all round noise. After all it is best not to burn bridges if you plan for an out of court settlement.
If there is a conflict and litigation is unavoidable you spend a lot of time preparing, analysing applicable laws and regulations, relevant case law and the profiles of the members of whatever panel will decide. There are huge databases on all this, and much you are expected to know.
The public secret is that lawmakers care little about IPR and Supreme courts in many countries are not really familiar with IPR so you get a lot of changes in laws, regulations and current practice you are supposed to stay abreast with. That part really sucks up a lot of time and is not billable time. Much of what we do is not visible to the general public and few are interested either.
