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Archived updates for Friday, December 09, 2005

UTBMS Patent Billing Codes Update

A second draft of the Uniform Task-Based Management System ("UTBMS") Patent Billing Codes has now been published for review by members of the the I/P Working Group of the UTBMS Update Initiative (at http://www.utbms.com). Please feel free to contact me for a copy.

If you haven't heard already, the UTBMS is a budgeting and billing system designed to provide clients and law firms with meaningful cost information on legal services. It currently includes a Litigation Code Set that was released in 1995 and has since been widely adopted for contested matters, including judicial litigation, binding arbitration and regulatory/administrative proceedings. More-recently, the ABA has also released Counseling, Project, and Bankruptcy Code Sets. However, the ABA's Steering Committee concluded that "it would not be practicable to develop practice-specific task codes."

This has led various consumers of intellectual property services to adopt inconsistent and/or proprietary code sets that have frustrated consumers and service providers alike. The UTBMS Intellectual Property Workgroup has therefore been charged with building upon those legacy code sets in order to develop a baseline model code set for patent, trademark, and copyright services.

If you are interested in participating in this effort, just send a short e-mail message to I/P WorkGroup Chair Domenic Leo at domenic.leo@datacert.com with your subcommittee choice(s) of patent, trademark, and/or copyright. Though we have received support from firms with significant interests in the IP community, participation by you and your firm would help us insure that this initiative is a successful one.
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