Thursday, June 24, 2004 4:00 AM
How much should legal information cost? Is there a demand for a pay-as-you-go legal information? Are monthly subscriptions to legal information viable? And, finally, will the micropayment concept find mainstream acceptance this time around?
I was struck by those questions as I looked over Patent Fetcher, a website and service from Patent Logistics LLC. While not a blawg, the Patent Fetcher service offers some interesting food for thought as to the concept of micropayments and the idea of paying for legal information.
According to its website, Patent Fetcher works like this:
After you perform a patent search at your favorite patent Web site (e.g. the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) and EPO Esp@cenet Web sites), you can do a patent download here - resulting in the complete patent or patent application as one single file in the popular PDF format.
On our Pay-As-You-Go Patent Fetcher site, you pay only US$0.65 (65 cents!) to download Patent PDFs from the entire collection of U.S. patents and published patent applications, as well as any foreign publications for which there are images at the EPO Web site.
I am certainly not well-versed with patent practice, but at a glance, paying 65 cents for an immediately available pdf copy of a patent seems like a pretty good deal. In fact, beyond patents, I would bet that there is a lot of legal-related information for which people would willingly pay 65 cents if they could get it quickly and easily. And, for the legal content provider (blawg author?), if enough people buy their information, it might make the effort worthwhile.
The stumbling block may be the micropayment itself. The micropayment idea has been around for quite some time. I remember no less than Bill Gates talking up the concept in mid-90s. Yet the continuing challenge has been to find a simple delivery method that the average website visitor would use.
Patent Fetcher is using BitPass for its micropayment system. BitPass, like other micropayment services, requires buyers to first buy a pre-paid BitPass card. To its credit, BitPass has created a very easy process which allows for users to buy pre-paid "BitPass" card via multiple methods, including eBay's PayPal system. The card can then be used to purchase items, priced as low as 1 cent, from websites who participate in the micropayment program.
Even with this level of ease of use, there is still the looming question of whether a mainstream web audience will take the time to obtain pre-paid micropayment cards?
The optimist in me believes that in the long run, the answer will be yes. Especially, as companies like BitPass continue to push to eliminate any and all user hurdles within the micropayment system.
Ultimately, for anyone interested in the viability of micropayments within the legal information industry, keeping an eye on the success or failure of services like Patent Fetcher is certainly not a bad idea.