ADVERTISING FEATURE
20 YEARS AND COUNTING…
A LEGACY OF SUCCESS
After celebrating 20 years in the business, Patrix IP Helpware prefers to let its clients do the talking. Andrew Currier, co-founding partner of the Canadian IP fi rm Perry+Currier Inc talks about his fi rm’s history and specialist areas and how Patrix and Patricia® may have aided its success.
What fi rst interested you about IP? Aſt er fi nishing my
engineering degree and
spending time in the automotive industry, I wanted to get a broader perspective on the world. T e breadth of
law seemed like an excellent
complement to the specialty of engineering so I went to law school. When I graduated, IP was a perfect way to bring together my engineering and legal studies.
What motivated you to start your own business and how did you meet your business partner?
Aſt er working for several years at large IP fi rms, I felt there was a need to modernise the way IP is practised. T ere were tremendous opportunities for automation nearly everywhere I looked. I also advised and spent time in-house at various tech startups, where I caught the entrepreneurial bug. At a certain point I thought “Hey, there really is a way to modernise IP practice and be an entrepreneur too.” I joined my partner Steve Perry a year aſt er he started the fi rm, and it was a perfect fi t. We both saw the same opportunity and have very complementary skillsets in running a business.
What is your main focus for the business? Steve and I both had strong
patent and
trademark preparation and prosecution practices, with a focus on soſt ware, electronics, telecommunications, mechanical devices, fi nancial services and medical devices. Dolly
www.worldipreview.com
[Kao, head of the fi rm’s trademark department] had a strong biotechnology patent and trademark practice. Not surprisingly, the fi rm’s practice has now grown to cover all areas of patent and trademark prosecution and litigation, even though the fi rm remains well known for its strength in outgoing
patent preparation and prosecution. How long have you been using Patricia®?
Since June 2006, when we started the fi rm. You might even call Patricia® a silent founding partner!
When did you realise that you may require specialised IP software instead of perhaps relying upon spreadsheets or similar methods of data storage (as many start-up fi rms do)?
Steve and I realised this need in our previous practices, and indeed one of our motivations here was to anchor the fi rm around technology. Excel spreadsheets break quickly—in my experience at
about 50 cases they become unwieldy,
ineff ective and even dangerous. We had both seen in previous fi rms that a failure to embrace specialised IP soſt ware was at best going to impair growth and quality, and at worst could lead to a missed deadline.
When and how did you fi rst hear about Patrix and Patricia®?
Prior to founding the fi rm, research was done to
What led you to the realisation that the investment in Patricia® and Patrix services would be prudent?
In our view the broader legal marketplace is still struggling to grasp just how powerful and seismic a change technology and automation can be. We believe that law in general, and IP specifi cally, is in the middle of
locate all of the commercial packages available. In that search Patricia® was picked from a variety of options.
What concerns did you have about procuring and implementing a system?
and trademark
Programmability and the ability to support a paperless practice were key. Patricia® has fulfi lled both needs very well.
the same
kind of transformation that the automotive industry went through in the 1920s with the introduction of the assembly line, or the kind of transformation fi nancial services went through starting in the early 1990s as electronic exchange platforms began to replace the traditional trading fl oor. Most fi rms are now grasping the need for automation, but in our view many still struggle with its implementation, despite paying lip service to it.
We are perhaps lucky that the founding partners both have electrical engineering backgrounds; we are in a sense ‘hard wired’ to appreciate how technology can benefi t an IP practice. In many
World Intellectual Property Review September/October 2013 73
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