The Client & Tikkun Olam
Jeremy Ben-David, Founder, Managing Partner
Back in the day, one of my favorite authors was John Grisham. As a young associate Patent Attorney starting my career in an IP firm, I was involved in assisting different types of clients. In the late 1980’s, three clients that particularly stand out in my mind were: an individual who had developed a mass watering system using a hydraulically expandable water boom; a drip-irrigation company; and a solar power company using solar panels floating on bodies of water. It was during those formative years that I came to realize that my occupation, apart from putting bread on the table, was actually important!
Yes, I know that, as patent attorneys, we have to believe that we’re important, but I’m serious. Back then, and since then, I realized that by providing services to our clients -most of them at least - we have a hand in “tikkun olam”.
Tikkun Olam is a Hebrew phrase which, when translated literally means something like “repair of the World”. What it actually means is a process of bringing the world to a state of completeness. When we look around, because communication is now instant and bad news travels fast; and as so many technological capabilities have been heightened to ever greater levels, some used positively and others, well, less so, we are prone to get the impression that “things” have never been so bad. War, hunger, disease, climate change, human rights – you name it.
As a born optimist, however, I disagree with this assessment. You only have to compare our existence as a whole with that of 100 or 200 years ago, to realize that even though none of the above-mentioned ills have been cured, humanity has developed more and more solutions and capabilities to combat said ills. It’s obviously a multi-faceted discussion, but these are my 2 cents – as I said before – as an optimist.
This brings me back to the responsibility as a patent attorney, and the part that we play in tikkun olam. When I cast my mind back to all of my clients and their inventions, and even more so when I look at our current clientele, and the solutions tat they bring to humanity in almost every field of human endeavor, I know that when we help secure the rights of our clients, we are heling them to introduce their technologies into the marketplace, for the benefit of their clients. And when our clients are the inventors of medicines and various food and water related technologies, for example, then we are also helping society at large.
Back to John Grisham. One of his first books was “The Firm”, published in 1991; another was “The Client”, published in 1993. I enjoyed them immensely. I had no idea that only two years later I was going to start a new firm, with new clients, and with new challenges. After 30 years, the many generations of inventions with which we have had both the opportunity and honor to be involved seem like so much science fiction. Science it may be, but fiction it’s not. And (says the optimist) the best is yet to come!
