Dear Michael,

Thanks for writing back and for your queries. I like your point on creating more value than cost for the clients as the approach of your firm. We are also among the larger players in our jurisdiction and are often facing the same situation that is not persuasive enough to the client. However, when the budget is limited the clients sometimes have no choice and we have to live with that. The fact that you could create added value was amply visible from the way you have structured your questions and suggestions to us and I should tell you that in this way you have taken the lead between the bigger firms .

The client finally selected a practitioner which from a smallish firm and went to an even smaller practice on the East coast, but she has good qualifications, experience and her questions have pointed to the same directions as yours did. She also have shown a willingness to work on this matter very clearly. As this is an invention that is based on a discovery which is still not a part of the peer-reviewed body of science this dose of plain confidence and enthusiasm was very persuasive to the client. As you will know from your experience it is incredibly hard to break through the surface of the accepted wisdom and many a pioneering technology faces this daunting task without success.

Regarding the LinkedIn process of selecting the foreign associates, I should confirm that it is new for us too but it has shown to be vastly superior to the old system of tapping into the traditional IP networks. Our firm is well established with multiple global networks at its disposal but we failed to find an appropriate associate for more than a couple of months. Once we used the LinkedIn we suddenly had the contacts from Australia, India, US, all over EU in all possible and imaginable forms and price ranges. It was somewhat complicated to make those offers comparable but our standard IP experience helped us to define the task so that we could compare the results. However, the main point is that we have been proved that in the “flat world” we do have to behave differently and to restructure our professional attitudes.

Thank you for contributing the time on this matter as a courtesy – this somehow fits well with the LinkedIn method. I very much liked our contacts and should confirm that we count on you in some role already on later stages of this project. I am very much looking forward to our further contacts.

Best regards, Mladen Vukmir