The attempt to brand Albany, Schenectady, Saratoga, and Rensselaer counties, all just north of Columbia and Greene counties, as "Tech Valley" may be self-fulfilling, according to the 2010 Tech Valley Patent Indices Annual Report from Hoffman Warnick, an intellectual property law firm based in Albany. The report says the number of patents issued from the four counties keeps increasing. Spencer Warnick, a partner at Hoffman Warnick, said, "the most impressive numbers to us are the Capital Region without GE indices. Both the quarterly average and total number of issued patents have continued to rise over the nine years that we have done the index. These are prime indicators that the region continues to get stronger technically and that the region is clearly no longer just IBM and GE. We are technologically diversified and are stronger for it."