Posts Tagged: "Clause 8"

On this episode of the Clause 8 podcast, Patrick Kilbride and returning guest Brad Watts join Eli Mazour to talk about the U.S. Chamber’s new initiative, the current narrative on IP rights and the forces that shaped it, the themes of the IP Principles document, and what they hope to accomplish. They also discuss why the U.S. Chamber cares so much about IP issues, whether patents are underappreciated compared to other IP rights, and much more!

Innovators that invest in R&D are the driving force behind today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape. However, implementers that rely on – and as a result benefit from – those innovations to sell their own products and services aren’t usually eager to pay those innovators. But by paying the innovators, the implementers are actually helping make sure that the cycle of innovation continues. Matteo Sabattini, the new President and Chief Licensing Officer of Convida, joins Eli on this episode of the Clause 8 podcast to talk about this important dynamic.

In 1975, Ian Murgitroyd founded his own firm in Glasgow, Scotland after stumbling into the patent field.  He could not have imagined that it would become one of the world’s biggest IP service providers, let alone that it would make history by being the first and only law firm to be listed on the London Stock Exchange or later be acquired by a private equity firm for £63 million.

What is a patent worth? What makes patents valuable? Patent practitioners, valuation experts, and academics spend a lot of time thinking about and debating these questions. But they rarely get fully tested. Most patents are never litigated or licensed. Settlement negotiations and licensing agreements are often driven by factors that aren’t related to the worth of any individual patent. The latest judicial decisions provide some hints at the answers to these questions, but also frequently lead to overreaction and confusion.

Amit Soussana is an IP attorney at one of Israel’s leading IP firms, Luzzato and Luzzatto. She is also one of more than 240 people – including babies, children, women, the elderly, and the disabled – who were brutally taken hostage by terrorists from Gaza on October 7. More than 40 days later, almost all of them are still being held hostage. 

Attorneys are, by nature, skeptical and risk averse. I was repeatedly reminded of this over the last few months listening to discussions about using AI for patent practice and Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons’ (D-DE) latest effort to fix the patent eligibility mess (via the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) of 2023). Amid the initial excitement over ChatGPT’s launch, IP attorneys rightfully turned their attention to the risks and pitfalls of using AI. However, I was surprised about the extent to which that became the focus of conversations regarding using AI for patent practice. Although I think – like in most other professional fields –patent attorneys have accepted the notion that AI will play a major role in their practice at some point in the distant future, the general consensus seems to be that the risks are too great, and the payoff is too small for that to happen anytime soon.

Will Twitter’s meager patent portfolio doom Musk’s hopes of “strictly enforcing” Twitter’s IP rights? Eli is joined by return guest Kroub on this special episode to discuss how an unprecedented IP dispute between two of the world’s richest men might play out. In response to Meta successfully launching Threads, Musk’s go to lawyer Alex Spiro sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg expressing “serious concerns that Meta…has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” and intention to “strictly enforce its intellectual property rights.”  Although the letter focuses on trade secrets, Spiro’s colleagues are likely busy mining Twitter’s patent portfolio.

Cellular technology continues to transform the world. That would not be possible without innovative companies investing billions of dollars in research and development (R&D) to come up with innovations that make up transformational standards, such as 5G, and obtaining standard essential patents (SEPs) based on those innovations. Over the last 15 years, many companies that sell products based on those standards have invested heavily in trying to pay as little as possible for relying on those innovations. That latter investment has spurred global litigation campaigns, heated debates, endless amounts of lobbying, and questionable actions by regulators. Tim Pohlmann has seen the growth of these disagreements up close: initially, while working for the German government, and then as an economist who wrote his doctoral thesis on patenting and standardization.

Robert Giles took over the Chief IP Counsel role at Qualcomm, the world’s leading wireless technology innovator, in May 2021.  In that role, Giles shepherds a team that is responsible for managing and growing 140,000 IP assets and oversees some of the most high-profile patent disputes in the world. Prior to that, Giles helped lead Qualcomm’s successful efforts in its global litigation with Apple. The litigation blossomed into more than 100 cases around the world before Apple finally agreed to settle.

Raymond Millien likes to compare himself to Forrest Gump. As someone who pivoted from a programming job at GE Aerospace to a career in intellectual property law, bounced between in-house and outside counsel roles within that space, and even got involved in public policy, he’s definitely a renaissance man. And he’s fallen into many of those jobs by accident. He credits his adventurous and successful career — working as Chief IP Counsel for big-name companies like Volvo, founding his own IP boutique, and now serving as the CEO of Harness IP — to intellectual curiosity and openness. 

Before Phil Warrick began working for Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Capitol Hill wasn’t in his career plans. But when an opportunity to work with Coons emerged, he decided to take the leap. For two years, he served as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) IP counsel detailee to Coons after Coons helped restart the Senate’s IP Subcommittee, working on bipartisan initiatives like the IDEA Act and legislation to fix the Section 101 patent eligibility mess.  Those efforts were a dramatic departure from Congress’s previous fixation on the “patent troll” narrative.   

The first episode of this season of Clause 8 featured the most recent USPTO Director – Andrei Iancu – discussing his efforts to strengthen America’s patent system over the last three years.  One of the most publicly vocal opponents of those efforts was Josh Landau, patent counsel at the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA).  Now that those views are in ascendancy in the Biden administration and Congress, it made sense to finish this season by talking to Josh.

“Jeff [Roh, CEO at IntuitiveX] knew for every person like [him], who is able to succeed, there’s countless others who aren’t. They just fall flat because they encounter resistance and give up. And so he was on a mission to make other inventors and surgeons be successful as well.” Don’t miss this latest episode of Clause 8 with President and Chief Legal Officer of IntuitiveX, Mark Han, about the new business model IntuitiveX created to help innovators in the medical field.