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To: Amy J who wrote (132213)	4/12/2001 5:51:27 AM
From: Dave	Respond to of 186894

Amy, Our lawyer's bill is a fraction of the cost of the USPTO bills, just to give you an idea as to how expensive USPTO fees are, when you add them all up. Our lawyer has been incredibly generous - the USPTO isn't. I find that very hard to believe. Does your firm have an inside counsel? For Small Entities, to file a patent is approximately 300-400, for 20 claims including 3 independent ones. What are you doing? Filing 400 claim cases? If so, yes i believe the filing fee would be expensive. However, to prosecute a 400 claim case is very burdensome. It's rather costly for startups to file patents, but necessary, like insurance. Unfortunately, the cost is too high for most startups, so they tend not to do them. I really disagree. If you compare the US PTO with the other respective Patent Offices, you will find our Patent Office one of the cheapest with one of the best markets in the world. In our case, I am trying to stuff everything into the fewest number of patents to keep costs low, which is a bit of a risk, because it opens up the risk of a narrow interpretation. Hmmm, yeah, you could do that, but in some ways, it could be considered "penny wise-pound foolish"

To: Amy J who wrote (132213)	4/12/2001 6:26:19 AM
From: Dave	Respond to of 186894

Amy, Another question, you stated that u have paid 10k to the US PTO. What % of that fee is maintenance fees on patents already issued? Maintenance fees are the recurring revenue stream that the PTO wants since no money is made on the examination of an application. See, alot of corporation are struggling with this basic dilemna, i.e. patent everything or only what is essential. There was a saying that only 1 out of 100 patents really is worth something. 15 out of 100 block a company's competitors from variations. The remainder of the patents are generally worthless. Corporations are now looking at their patent portfolios (generally older patents) and are trying to determine if any commercial products "read" on their patents. We have seen a wave of patent infringement suits. Wang sued Aol over a "browser" patent that was originally issued in 86 (i think). They lost. Currently, NCR is suing Palm and Handspring over 2 handheld computer patents that were originally issued around 1987. Does your company also file PCTs? The fees on those are extremely expensive.... Take a look at this... european-patent-office.org This is what a typical patent costs in Europe. Search and Examination fees are typically 2800 Euros. At an exchange Rate of $.80/Euro, that translates into approximately 2240 US Dollars. For a typical case filed in the US, is approximately $700-800