A study on the “digitalization of client relationships, IP awareness building and business development via social media for IP experts” has been running at the CEIPI IP Business Academy since summer 2022. Currently, we see that the IP system is affected by the accelerating digital transformation. The interaction patterns between lawyers/attorneys and clients are changing, as well as the professional exchange between IP experts is shifting.

Also, the initiation of personal contacts has changed and is done often via social media. LinkedIn, a network designed for professional relationships, is growing at 15% a year with over 830 million members and is by far the most important network for legal counsels and IP professionals. But the proper use of LinkedIn for awareness building and business development under the “New Work conditions” is a great challenge for IP experts as well as for law firms, IP boutiques and service providers. This interview series highlights best practice in the IP community.

Andre Sarmento is the Director International Business Development of UNGRIA. Ungria is a leading Intellectual Property law firm with 130 years of experience in the national and international arena. Ungria prioritizes the importance to provide its clients a highly-qualified legal and technical advice in order to firmly file, prosecute and enforce their intangible assets in Spain, Europe, LATAM and the rest of the world.

Here are the questions that were discussed in the talk:

  • During the last years many patent attorneys created connections online e.g. via LinkedIn. Do you see, that those online connections also lead to personal meetings on conferences, like INTA, and do they create business?
  • The IP world is both globally connected, but also bound to national jurisdictions. How does an international law firm make business development between multiple countries and how relevant are digital tools for that?
  • Communication on LinkedIn is an important tool to attract new clients and create awareness for your topics. But how should you communicate on LinkedIn? E.g. which language should you use, a local language or English?
  • What is the policy of Ungria to deal with the efficiency reach for the digital development and on the other side the need of having also personal relationships and meetings? Is there a defined Customer Journey how to engage potential clients in the web and the physical world?
  • Do you work with machine translations or do you translate texts on your own, how do you deal with this language question?

The International Institute for IP Management will provide with their Social Media Agency training videos free of charge on their content portal for IP and IP management about this topics.

Here is the recorded video from the CEIPI IP Business Talk with Andre Sarmento from Ungria about the best practice in awareness building and business development in IP on LinkedIn from 20.6.2023 in full length viewable: