Legal Marketing & PR

Brinks Offers Video for CLE Credit

By Larry Bodine

Brinks Hofer, the 170-lawyer intellectual property law firm, just relaunched its website. Part of the package takes online video a step farther, and offers viewers CLE credit for watching.

The 62-minute program "The Supreme Court Decision in Bilski: What's Patentable Now?" the virtual panel discussion features lawyers Tim Delaney, Meredith Martin Addy, Marc Richards and Charlie McMahon.

As a marketing technique, the video stands out for making the website interactive, providing valuable information to visitors and demonstrating the firm's expertise in patent law.

Viewers can click a link to get the PowerPoint and speaker bios, which were presented in a live webinar last July. The program is worth one hour or CLE credit in Illinois, and the firm will help lawyers from other states in getting CLE credit. At end of the program viewers much click on a link to a questionnaire to prove that they attended the entire program.

Bilski v. Kappos was a major intellectual property case in which the US Supreme Court ruled on June 28, 2010, that certain kinds of business methods were indeed patentable, but  it left muddled the applicable test for determining the patentability of methods.  The court ruled against Bernard Bilski, who was trying to patent a method of hedging risks arising from a company's exposure to fluctuations in commodity prices, because the court said they were abstract ideas that were not patentable. 

Ambiguity in the law creates a field day for lawyers, and Brinks' video offers guidance on how the Patent and Trademark office will deal with the ruling.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on September 08, 2010 (boomark / email).