ATTORNEY NETWORKING MEETS THE PATENT SYSTEM: Contact Networks, a next-generation enterprise search company, today announced that Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and PopeoP.C., an Am Law 100 law firm, has selected Contact Networks' application to enable its entire staff of 450 attorneys to quickly find introductions and contacts from the extended network of relationships of their own colleagues.

Contact Networks offers a private social networking application for corporations, allowing employees to share contacts with their colleagues in a secure and private system. The application is automated to discover and index relationships without requiring manual data entry or maintenance. Users manage their own participation and choose when it is appropriate to make introductions on behalf of their colleagues.

Contact Networks application is installed within Mintz' own secure corporate infrastructure. The patent-pending technology automates the process of creating and maintaining firm-wide contact lists.

- Interesting stuff - but what happens if the company ultimately is granted a patent, and then begins enforcing it? I imagine that this could give migranes the staff at Minz, trying to figure out solutions to all the possible conflicts of interest that would arise from such a scenario.