Somerville Associates

Somerville Associates aims to provide excellence in British and European patent related services without the costs and overheads associated with traditional patent practices. Our focus is on providing high quality and consistent attorney time in exchange for what is billed to our clients rather than excessive charging for mainly administrative tasks. Therefore a high proportion of every Pound, Euro or Dollar billed to the client is converted into an optimal work product and furthering the business interests of the client. The extent of variation between competence of British and European patent attorneys is not always fully appreciated, notwithstanding sub-optimal prosecution in European jurisdictions having severe post-grant validity and enforceability consequences. For example, otherwise valuable European patents are regularly revoked during the EPO opposition procedure owing to failures in the prosecution between filing and grant. With extensive prosecution and post-grant opposition experience in the electromechanical fields for corporate clients, we take pride in providing robust prosecution leading to valuable and enforceable patents in the UK and Europe. We are also experienced at assessing and challenging the post-grant validity of European patents belonging to clients and competitors. We can provide patent landscaping and competitor monitoring services using our in-house bespoke EPO data mining software interfacing with the EPO patent register.