It's a client choice. May be he wants to get a patent in those countries.
Is it an informed client choice?
I had a client make a similar choice once. Yes, it was well informed. I almost refused to do it. He wanted to file in Iraq at the height of the war there, among other unlikely places, like Somalia. Eventually, I convinced him to not file in most of those places, so I didn't have to refuse. For Iraq, I think I couldn't even verify that they had a functioning patent office that could accept an application at the time. And, without going into details, none of those jurisdictions would have made a difference in his strategy. But he still really wanted them, until I asked for prepayment of estimated costs.
Note that the choice need only be informed, not reasonable.
By the way, if you have a client that might not be sophisticated and/or might not have infinite funding but is still ordering everything on the foreign patents menu, I strongly urge you to collect prepayment of estimated costs and hold them in a client trust fund account. And, not just for initial filing, but for all prosecution. It's hard to keep up with that sort of early attention to details and extra work of invoicing and collecting prepayments. If you don't have the support in your practice to handle all that, you should think very carefully before accepting such work.
An alternative is to provide contact information of foreign firms to the client and let them work directly with those firms. Coordination for IDSs can be a bit of a challenge, but the alternative risks finding yourself owing foreign associates tens of thousands of dollars and learning that your client just ran out of money.
Regards.
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Topic: Patent search in "Exotic" countries (Read 1899 times)
