The patent community often treats the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as the person responsible for setting and changing an administration’s patent policy. On this episode of the Clause 8 podcast, former USPTO Commissioner for Patents, Robert Stoll, says that’s a mistake. “The autonomy of the Director is not what people think it is on the outside who are not familiar with it,” he emphasizes. “It’s not your own voice. Any Director of the PTO has to work in their administration and carry forward what becomes the policy of the President. So, they’re not free hands with respect to implementing their ideas, and you just have to recognize that.”

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Israel is known as the land of milk and honey, the Holy Land, and the Startup Nation. And it consistently ranks in the top five countries for number of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications filed per capita. But due to its relatively small size, it’s understandably not known as a hotbed of major patent deals. Yet, surprisingly, the person responsible for making many of the biggest patent deals in the world happen is an unassuming lawyer based in Tel Aviv, Lillian Shaked.

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The copy writes itself: “Five-Time Woman World Jump Rope Champion Transforms Fitness Industry after Securing Patents.”  However, you’re unlikely to find a glowing profile of Molly Metz on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website anytime soon. That’s because, after the fitness industry embraced Molly’s invention as the gold standard for speed jump ropes, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the USPTO invalidated the claims of the patents based on prior art from 1978 and 1979. 

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Bruce Berman, the PR guru of the IP world, is the CEO of Brody Berman Associates, a communications firm that helps tell patent stories. Berman has implemented marketing and business development programs on behalf of more than 200 IP portfolios and businesses. And, in 2016, he founded the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, an independent nonprofit that raises awareness of the use and impact of intellectual property on individuals and businesses. He is also the host of the Understanding IP Matters podcast. In the latest episode of the Clause 8 Podcast, Berman delves into the who, what, when and how of telling IP stories to help promote causes in the patent world.

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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.

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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. 

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The 2017 TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Supreme Court decision led to a major shift in where patent litigation cases are filed in the United States. Before TC Heartland, a patent owner could bring a case in almost any district where an alleged infringer conducted business. Because of its predictable rules and streamlined procedures, the Eastern District of Texas became the most popular forum for such cases; nearly 40% of patent infringement actions were filed there in 2016. When Professor Timothy Hsieh clerked in the Eastern District of Texas, he saw firsthand the benefits – for patent owners and defendants – of experienced judges handling patent cases. TC Heartland changed that by changing the rules regarding where companies can be sued for patent infringement. By 2017, only 15% of patent infringement cases were tried in the Eastern District of Texas. Instead, patent cases became concentrated in Delaware and California.

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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.   

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The golden age for patent brokers has come and gone, but that doesn’t stop Louis Carbonneau. “There are very, very few patent brokers nowadays,” Carbonneau says. “We’re just one of a handful left. And frankly, we get about four or five portfolios every single day that people want us to broker. We only say yes 1% or 2% of the time.” As one of the world’s leading patent brokers, the CEO and Founder of Tangible IP has brokered over 4,500 patents and boasts close to 30 years in the intellectual property industry. With experience as Microsoft’s former General Manager of International IP & Licensing, Carbonneau has sat on many sides of the intellectual property table. He shares his adventures in the industry and lessons learned with Eli, host of the Clause 8 podcast, including behind-the-scenes stories from his time at Microsoft, the common pitfalls of patent licensing, and why price isn’t always an essential part of the conversation when buying and selling intellectual property.

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If listing artificial intelligence (AI) machines as inventors on patents sounds like science-fiction to you, Professor Ryan Abbott is ready to make the case that it’s a very real issue. Abbott became interested in patents after becoming a medical doctor and obtaining a law degree from Yale Law School. He then noticed that scientists were starting to use AI to identify problems and solutions — and wondered about the legal ramifications from a patent perspective. Shouldn’t the AI be identified as an inventor, the same way a human would be? Abbott clearly believed that was the case. However, there was no precedent for any patent system allowing for an AI machine to be listed as an inventor. In fact, he discovered that companies had to forego obtaining patent protection because they were unable to do that. 

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Prof. Dan Brown and his son, Dan Brown Jr., are straight out of central casting.  Prof. Brown, the father, grew up in a working-class Irish family on Chicago’s South Side before eventually becoming a professor of engineering at Northwestern University. Dan Jr. is a moppy-haired marketing genius who is now President of LoggerHead Tools.

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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.

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“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.

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Chris Agrawal is President of the Association of Intellectual Property Firms and partner at Bookoff McAndrews.  He was instrumental in one of the biggest patent transactions in history and the reason Eli Mazour [Clause 8’s host] got into patent law in the first place. If you’re a startup founder or an executive at a growth stage company worrying about patent protection or wondering how to scale your patent program, download and listen to this episode today.

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