Patent Portfolio Strategies

Transcript

What's driving today's patent portfolio strategy?

Jennifer Lane Spaith
Partner, Intellectual Property

We are seeing a lot of clients no longer focusing on the size of their patent portfolios or the quantity of patents that they are getting and the rate at which they are getting them. Increasingly, clients are looking for ways to articulate that their patent portfolio has really added value to the company. So how can they articulate to their own executive boards? How can they show their competitors in the marketplace? How can they signal to their partners that their patent portfolios are adding value?

How is patent value being shown in practical terms?

In order to really demonstrate value through the patent portfolio, we need to have taken that into account upfront. We work very hard to make sure that those patent applications are well drafted to support any business use case that the client may have. Going forward, once the patents are issued, we work with our clients to survey the competitive marketplace, understand where product development has gone, what that looks like as it is mapped into their patent portfolio, and how they can best use and deploy those assets.

How our clients protecting AI innovations—and how are you helping? 

We are seeing more and more industries develop products and services with and related to artificial intelligence. Everyone is getting into the AI game. From a technical perspective, different clients, different industries approach that in a more or less technical way. We see a lot of clients coming with different levels of sophistication to AI innovation. In order to best protect innovations that our clients are making with artificial intelligence, we really try to look deeper than just, “Hey, I used AI to solve this problem.” What did you do? How did you have to condition your inputs and arrange your inputs? How did you have to train that AI model? What new use cases did you enable for your company, for your consumers, for your customers when you did that? Focusing on those aspects we can really work with engineers and technologists to draw out what the patentable aspects of a new AI involved product or technology might be.

How is AI changing the way patent law is practiced?

Much like our clients, AI is also affecting how we do our work. In particular, generative AI and the use of AI to actually generate text that you might be able to use in or alongside a patent application. We have been employing and experimenting with those technologies internally here. Of course, the first thing that we always are concerned with is the security of those technologies and the responsible use of artificial intelligence. When we are dealing with subject matter for patent applications, obviously it is highly confidential information. We work with our vendors to ensure that anything we are using has the highest degree of security available to keep that information confidential. Beyond that, we are seeing the use of artificial intelligence in the patent process as really something as a tool to be used to get a starting point, to start ideas, and to synthesize general technical information that may need to be brought to bear in an innovative setting. So there are ways that patent attorneys are beginning to use those tools and put them together for the benefit of their clients. Going forward, we are also seeing that these tools are a good way to get a sense of what is out there in the competitive marketplace in terms of are there competitors that may be infringing a given patent or a given suite of patents and looking at those and how to bubble up those ideas, and which tools are making the most sense.

Is economic uncertainty shifting IP investment?

I would say right now there is an economically uncertain environment, but we are not seeing companies pull back on innovation. Like I was saying, we have seen companies take a position towards their patent portfolio where they want to be able to project value. They want to show how the assets are lending importance to the business. We have not seen a pullback on that investment in innovation because it is still so important to stay at the forefront of technological development. So we have not seen that.

What impact is the current administration having on IP?

With the change in administration, I think we are waiting to see how that affects operations at the U.S. Patent Office. So far, with the current Secretary of Commerce, the new Director of the Patent Office, we do not see any immediate drastic impacts, but we are continuing to watch what will be happening at the Patent Office under this administration.