New Hampshire Bar Association Intellectual Property Law section chair Peter J. Gardner, an attorney with Stebbins Bradley Harvey & Miller in Hanover, traveled this past summer to Iceland and Southern France. While overseas, he had the opportunity to meet with innovators and attorneys and to observe firsthand a changing legal services landscape.

In Reykjavik, I met with Dr. Kari Stefánsson, founder and chairman of deCode Genetics, Prof. Jóhannes Sigurdsson and Prof. David Thor Björgvinsson of the recently established Reykjavik University School of Law, and Arni Vilhjalmsson, principal of Logos Legal Services and founding member of SVESI, Iceland's intellectual property law association.

Following many years as a neurology professor at the University of Chicago and then at Harvard, Dr. Stefánsson returned to Iceland in the mid-1990s to found deCode Genetics. Using comprehensive data drawn from generations of the entire Icelandic population, deCode identifies key genes and gene variations that contribute to complex diseases.

Dr. Stefánsson expressed to me his frustration at the laxness in recent years with which U.S. patents were granted for partial genetic sequences whose functions in many cases were unknown; Dr. Stefánsson believes such patents obstruct research, innovation and competition worldwide. He was encouraged that the USPTO has now tightened its patent-granting procedures.

Prof. Sigurdsson, along with Prof. Björgvinsson, who is now in Strasbourg as a judge at the International Court of Human Rights, described Iceland's rapidly developing technology-based economy and cited as a prime example the world-class genetics research conducted by Dr. Stefánsson and his colleagues at deCode. They also discussed the possibility that Iceland, a stable democracy respected internationally for a transparent and financially disciplined government, could become an important banking center within a decade.

Supported by some of Iceland's and Europe's largest businesses, Reykjavik University's law and business schools occupy a single ultramodern complex, and students from one school are exposed to courses in the other. I believe that within a few years the university will supply a steady stream of young business and law graduates who will constitute a key element of the talent base necessary to undergird Iceland's accelerating economic development.

Iceland's most prominent intellectual property law practitioner, Arni Vilhjalmsson serves clients in both North America and Europe. He anticipates that Iceland's attorneys, who possess excellent language skills and, often, U.S. education and training, may become an important legal services bridge across the Atlantic. Icelandic attorneys, Vilhjalmsson said, could offer international clients high quality legal work-for example, outsourced patent drafting services-at significant savings over American or European competitors.

In Aix-en-Provence, France, I sat down with Rémi de Gaulle and François Perruchot-Triboulet, two intellectual property attorneys with Bignon Lebray & Associés, and with Therese Keelaghan, a solo intellectual property practitioner licensed in both France and California. As have other regions of the country, the area between Aix and Montpellier has become an epicenter of French high-tech entrepreneurial innovation.

While times should be good for French intellectual property and business law attorneys, competition from international law firms is intense and growing. International firms aggressively recruit top French legal talent, lure entire practice groups away from French firms, and increasingly seek to offer multidisciplinary services with a full spectrum of European Union expertise. In this environment it is challenging for French firms to retain clients and to resist mergers either with other French firms or with international firms.

The effects of competitive and economic pressures on legal services that may be exerted within a few years by countries such as Iceland, and that are already evident in Europe, will no doubt eventually be felt in the U.S, especially by American intellectual property and business law attorneys with transnational practices. However, these same competitive pressures may create opportunities for New Hampshire's intellectual property and business law practitioners.

New Hampshire's well of legal talent, in private practice and at Franklin Pierce Law Center, coupled with a comparatively advantageous legal services cost structure, can produce superior value for international clients. As a result, I suggest New Hampshire attorneys should secure a competitive advantage by becoming providers of legal services with a conspicuously greater value component than could be offered by competing firms, such as those in Boston, New York or Washington, D.C.

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