[Patentpractice] Engagement Letters

[Roger Browdy]

Assume you have a patent practice in which you receive instructions to file and prosecute various patent applications from foreign associates in various countries.  I presume you will have the foreign associates sign an engagement letter.  The foreign associate is your client to whom you address your invoices and who pays those invoices.  However, the clients of the foreign associate are the applicants for the patent applications.  To the extent that they have given you a power of attorney for the U.S. prosecution, they are also your client, even though they have no direct obligation to pay your invoices to the foreign associate.

How do you address these applicants (your client's client) with respect to engagement letters?  Do you ask your client to agree to have each of their clients abide by their engagement letter with you?  Do you have a separate engagement letter for each different applicant, even though they are not a client obligated to pay your invoices?  Do you just finesse the issue?  Suppose your engagement letter has some kind of waiver of conflicts clause.  Does the signing by the foreign associate necessarily bind their client?  Other clauses may also be very relevant to the applicant company.  What do you do?

Roger
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