I/P Lawyers Per R&D Dollar Spent May Be Poor Metric

Companies that spend proportionately greater sums than their industry peers on R&D don’t enjoy greater revenue gains or better profits."Since IP lawyers and spending probably paces R&D spending, this counter-intuitive – and controversial – finding by Booz Allen Hamilton, as reported in the Wall. St. J., Vol. 246, Oct. 11, 2005 at A2, suggests that IP legal spending also reaches diminishing returns," writes Rees Morrison in his Law Department Management Blog. "What this means to law departments that have IP lawyers is that benchmarks of lawyers per R&D dollar spent could lead to flawed conclusions, if R&D spending is not a reliable marker of corporate fitness."