Did the NY Appellate Division err in Kroll case?

So far only one reader commented on the IPBiz post on the Kroll case, and that reader was not a patent lawyer. He noted:

I will admit, $700 for a patent app in NYC sounded awful cheap to me.
Gee, even if it took only 10 hours, that is only $70/hour, which sounds
very very cheap for NYC attorney.

Maybe this $700 includes work outsourced to Greenwich Conn? Or Bhopal
India?

Gee, just think what a great quality patent app you get for $700.
There must be a lot of IP attorneys working in back alleys and upstairs from
bars, to afford that price in NYC.

The appellate division had written: in 1999 the average fee charged in the New York City area for preparation of the application was $700

For those of you who may have missed it, the May 2006 issue of Intellectual Property Today (pp. 34-36) had an article "Efficiently Preparing US Patent Applications" which placed the median time per application at 40 hours and the median billing rate at $300. Hmmm, 40 X $300 = ???? I don't think one can get an outsourced / offshored patent application for $700.

The reader also noted that the "single molecule" transistor is back:

University of Arizona physicists have discovered how to turn single molecules into working transistors. It's a breakthrough needed to make the next-generation of remarkably tiny, powerful computers that nanotechnologists dream of.

The simplest molecule they propose for a transistor is benzene, a ring-like molecule. They propose attaching two electrical leads to the ring to create two alternate paths through which current can flow.

[Hmmm, maybe the Proposition 71 folks want a piece of this action?]


Thinking back to Jan-Hendrik Schon (who fraudulently claimed a single molecule transistor), one observes that the same BBC show that financed a critical look into "bubble fusion" (see earlier IPBiz post), did a documentary on Schon.