Lawyers adapt to changing face of IP law

Intellectual property law today is a complex game. As technology becomes more advanced and lines blur between definable ownership of ideas and images, it comes as no surprise that the work involved with enforcing intellectual property rights has become equally difficult.

“Whole industries are struggling with trying to fit new technology into old paradigms of rights holders,” says Pete Salsich III, a St. Louis-based lawyer and attorney with Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin LLP and blogger at the firm’s first blog, the Fair Use Blog. “It used to be easier for an industry or for people on two sides of a transaction within an industry to have a sense of, ‘Well, you have these rights and I’d like to acquire them.’”

Those days are no more. But luckily, with resources like the Fair Use Blog, everybody – from innovators looking to keep ownership of their ideas to lawyers practicing IP law to the general public – has access to readable, diverse and interesting IP news.

Though the Fair Use Blog is one of many LexBlog blogs related to IP issues, it carves out its own niche among them: started by a group of attorneys unfamiliar with how to be successful bloggers, it has quickly established itself as a leading source of IP news written in an unconventional but often witty, always informative style.

The blog was started after Salsich attended a legal conference in Seattle, where he heard a presentation about law blogs from LexBlog founder and president Kevin O’Keefe. Salsich had gone into the conference seeking ways to expand his practice’s horizons, and though he knew what blogs were, he’d never maintained his own.

“The timing was perfect,” he says. “So I was an easy sell, to some extent, and when I came back I was very excited about it and was able to talk to people who got excited about it as well.”

Partners Michael Kahn and Geoff Gerber, also contributors to the Fair Use Blog, were both receptive to the idea.

“I was open to it,” remembers Kahn. “I’m probably six laps behind Pete in this area. I was aware that there were blogs, and normally would have been skeptical.”

Seeing Salsich’s excitement, though, caught his attention.

“I listened, and as I was listening it started to make more and more sense,” Kahn says.

For Gerber, who became a partner with Blackwell Sanders earlier this year, it was simpler.

“I just thought it’d be really cool,” he says.

The following months were spent developing the project, and it debuted in mid May. Since then there has been an almost constant flow of updates to the blog, which has received more than 600 visits.

To find material, the three bloggers draw on a range of sources that include advance sheets, newswires like IP Law360 and various major news sources.

“Part of our practice has always been to try to stay on top of trends in the law,” says Salsich. “We’re fairly early in our blogging, and so we’re still to some extent feeling our way through what we’re watching and what we’re paying attention to.”

Though the blog has yet to bring these lawyers any paying legal work, Salsich notes two distinct benefits that are almost as important.

First, on a more personal level, he’s found that it has forced him stay much more aware of developments in the legal world.

“I already feel like I’m a more knowledgeable lawyer about the news our clients care about than I was six to nine months ago,” he says.

The second benefit is one that many blogging lawyers unexpectedly discover: when talking to potential clients, Salsich and his partners can point them to the blog. They’ve also embedded the link within their e-mail signatures and, by showing that they are keeping abreast of the latest news, have given themselves “an instant level of credibility.”

“I can’t say it has translated into any particular dollars yet, but I have no doubt that it will,” Salsich says, “because I can already sense the credibility increase that we get by simply being part of that conversation.”

The future of intellectual property law may be getting murkier by the day, but one thing is crystal clear: blogs are here to stay. And as lawyers adapt to meet the needs of their client base, firms can guarantee themselves a similar degree of security.