Winning awards is a regular event for Davies Collison Cave (DCC). Recent accolades include IP Firm of the Year by industry journal Managing Intellectual Property and ‘Number one patent attorney firm in the country’ by Chambers Global: the World’s Leading Lawyers for Business 2006. According to Leon Allen, one of the firm’s 29 partners, the firm’s success is due, in part, to its ability to adapt to and stay one step ahead of trends in IP: ‘To a large extent, the growth of IP, both globally and in Australia, has been in emerging technologies such as IT and biotechnology,’ says Leon. ‘Structuring the delivery of our services around these key practice areas has enabled us to easily react to industry change.’
A specialist service
By establishing national practice groups to focus on areas such as IT and biotechnology, DCC is able to guarantee clients access to highly trained specialists in these fields: ‘For example, our information sciences group is a multi-disciplinary team made up of patent attorneys, lawyers and trademark practitioners,’ says Leon. ‘They meet regularly to co-ordinate the provision of services to clients in the IT field and to develop marketing strategies.’
'The high quality service CPA provides could not be matched in-house'
The patent and trademark practice is complemented by the IP Law practice which provides both litigation and commercial services in relation to the exploitation of IP. Clients include many of Australia’s leading medical research organisations and universities, and the litigation team has conducted many high-profile cases including the successful challenge by Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline of Pfizer’s Viagra® patent.
As a strategic partner, DCC works closely with CPA to provide the best service it can to its clients, and to promote its services on a global scale. However, despite its success Leon is well aware that DCC cannot afford to be complacent and must ensure the business retains a healthy track record and plan for future growth.
Part of DCC’s solution has been to outsource time-heavy administrative tasks to CPA, so as to allow the firm’s 240 staff to concentrate on more value-adding responsibilities: ‘Continued expansion, global reach and related successes has meant that we also needed to address the increase of time-consuming and exacting processes such as renewals,’ says Leon. ‘As a result, we decided to outsource our trademark, patent and registered design renewals to CPA. For a start, the high quality service CPA provides could not be matched in-house, but we also recognised that the renewals function is largely stand alone and could be efficiently outsourced without compromising the provision of other services to clients.
‘CPA’s renewals service provides our clients with benefits such as online access to essential renewals information, as well as their portfolio. CPA has also provided us with a facility that has been specially adapted to our needs and those of our clients. To simulate this in house would have been an extremely costly affair.’
A clear way forward
So what does the future hold? Due to the recent growth of the firm, DCC Sydney moved to new, larger offices in April 2006. This move, plus previous expansion in DCC offices in Melbourne and Brisbane, has enabled DCC to concentrate on the road ahead: identifying key areas of IP practice, then focusing on providing the best possible practitioners and using the full resources of the firm, including CPA, to service clients in these fields.
For further information, please visit www.davies.com.au
This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 15
