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December - 2014 - Special issue > Top 25 Legal Consultants of the Year - 2014

Effectual Services: Providing End-to-End Solutions to Support Your Goals

Rashmisree Deb
Friday, December 12, 2014
Rashmisree Deb
Legal consultancy is a vast and complicated sector with IP (Intellectual Property) as a recent added phenomenon in India. With hardly any significant history of IP litigation in India, the courts, and the patents and trademark office are looking forward to other leading countries such as in Europe or the U.S. for legal precedent thus, expecting to follow similar trends. Traditionally, IP services in India were provided by lawyers, who at times lack the necessary technical knowledge. Thus, to bridge the gap and to provide IP services with technical expertise, Amit Aggarwal and Dr. Amit Goel established Effectual Services in the year 2010. The company works in tandem with startups, individual inventors, universities, SMEs and large corporations in providing technical support for preparing patent applications and filing them in India and in jurisdictions such as U.S., Europe, China, Australia and Canada. They provide their clients end-to-end solutions for patent support, right from the point when the invention is conceived, to the post grant management of the patent.

Solution Driven Work Attitude

With deep ingrained passion and solution driven attitude, Effectual Services helped their clients to avoid unnecessary cost of hiring attorneys for preparing patents applications in these countries,. The company assisted many of its Indian clients who were planning to launch their products abroad with 'Freedom to Operate' studies to identify any infringement issues before they actually occur. For instance, a medium sized Indian company manufacturing bottle caps was not able to launch product in the market due to potential threat from an international corporation (IC), who has a significant patent portfolio in the bottle caps domain. The royalty rates demanded by the IC pushed the price of the caps too high. Thus, the company with its client started off on the right foot to analyze the patent portfolio of the IC and identified the key patents due to which they enjoyed a monopolistic position. They also assisted in developing an alternative design, which was different from that of the IC, and was not infringing the patents owned by them. Conduct of thorough prior art search for alternate design developed by the client, found the design and mechanism to be novel. Therefore, a utility patent and an industrial design were filed with Indian patent office for the new design with a PCT application, as the client was interested in certain markets outside India as well. Eventually, a 'Freedom to Operate' search was conducted to confirm that the new design did not infringe any alive and enforceable patent in India, U.S., China and Europe. This was a Eureka moment for Effectual and its client as they launched a cost-effective product, without being threatened by patent litigation and increasing their client market share by a significant percentage.

In spite of the fact that Effectual has smooth sailing; it still faces two major roadblocks in its path � competition and retention of employees. Lack to IP awareness in India also poses a major challenge with organizations not ready to invest in protecting their inventions. But with these barriers, the company recently launched a program with the concept 'PYI � Protect your Inventions'. This initiative is to boost the morale of young innovators who come up with breakthrough inventions, but put minimal efforts to protect them. Thus, the company aims to enlighten the young technical and entrepreneurial community in India about the relevance of patents. "We work majorly with offshore clients on complex patent subject matters. This has made us understand the significance of inventions safeguarded by patents; especially their ability to protect the intellect and add value in terms of revenue numbers," says Amit Aggarwal, Co-Founder & Director, Effectual Services. Adding more feathers to it's hat, Effectual Services has been recognized both nationally and internationally for its work. The firm recently bagged the Red Herring Top 100 Asia Award 2014 and were ranked 14th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India Awards for 2014.

Initiative to Boost the Morale of the Employees
Effectual Services always believed in maintaining a healthy and stimulating work environment. This not only boosts the employees to deliver high quality service but also encourage them to maintain a healthy work-life balance. With a belief to empower people and provide them the right opportunities to hone their skills at work, they hire experts from outside to conduct training sessions, team bonding exercises, offsite trips and even get together. These initiatives motivate people and make them feel an essential part of the organization.

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