Posts in Interviews & Conversations

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I sat down with my business and life partner, Renee Quinn. In addition to telling Renee’s story about how she found her way into the intellectual property world, and through our sometimes-comical banter, we together explore what it really takes to build, sustain, and continuously reinvent an entrepreneurial company like IPWatchdog. What emerged was a practical roadmap for entrepreneurship, invention, navigating platform risk, and focused on the necessity of constantly being ready to pivot as old business models start to show signs of age and ultimately falter. From Renee’s journey from IP outsider to patented inventor, to firsthand lessons learned navigating Amazon’s reseller ecosystem, the discussion highlights how intellectual property operates in the real world, not the classroom.

On day one of 2026, we asked IP stakeholders to give their predictions for the year ahead on the IP front. From copyright and fair use to patent reform and USPTO operations, here is what they had to say about what to expect in the New Year.

While being realistic and practical in IP law is usually prudent, it’s a helpful exercise to now and then articulate one’s fantasies for a perfect world in order to gauge what topics come up most often. This year, as in years past, clarity on patent eligibility law remains high, while protections for an improvement of AI tools takes second. Some of the wishes below have little chance of coming true in 2026, but others may be granted—here is what our participants would like to see happen for IP in the new year.

As we wind down 2025 it is time to reflect on the year that was, and what the future will bring. This year was punctuated by a structural reset for the U.S. patent system. What unfolded was not just incremental reform, but a coordinated shift driven by leadership change, policy realignment, economic pressure, and accelerating adoption of AI—all converging to reshape how patents are examined, challenged, monetized, and managed. This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we explore the monumental changes and the biggest trends that impacted the patent and innovation industry during 2025, and which will play an important role in defining 2026.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I have a conversation about patent eligibility with patent attorneys and IPWatchdog Advisory Committee members John Rogitz and Clint Mehall.  There can be little doubt that the U.S. patent system is at an inflection point. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating, and there is a growing understanding that dominating AI technologies is a matter of national and economic security. But as important as everyone seems to recognize AI innovation to be, there is widely diverging handling of AI innovations within government, with almost astonishingly different views between the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch, with the Legislative Branch simply missing in action.

There’s a lot going on at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) right now, and it’s not just the usual noise about discretionary denial. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published a one-and-done rules package that, if it survives, would fundamentally change how inter partes review (IPR) challenge works, who can challenge patents, and when. The comment window on the proposed one-and-done rule has now closed. With more than 10,000 comments received by the USPTO and over 700 individual commenters weighing in, the proposed rules package has become a flashpoint for questions that go way beyond discretionary denial and AIA trials, with many asking whether the USPTO is functionally trying to engage in de facto legislation to neuter the PTAB.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I was joined by my longtime friend John White, who is the the creator of the patent bar review course I’ve taught for almost 27 years. Together we explore the intricate and ever changing patent landscape. First, we begin by discussing the bar exam and how it is changing, then we pivot to the evolving role of AI in patent law more generally. Our conversation traversed decades of personal history, friendship and professional insights, revealing how the industry has transformed over the years and what it means for the current and future generation of patent practitioners.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, we feature a panel discussion that took place on October 27 as a part of our annual life sciences program. Initially styled as a conversation about how artificial intelligence is transforming life sciences, it became quickly apparent that the conversation was not going to be limited to the life sciences sector. Instead the discussion evolved into a robust discussion about data risk and intellectual property, focusing on what every innovative company should have front of mind when considering the adoption of AI tools.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed I speak with Allison Gaul who serves as legal counsel for Boston Consulting Group. We begin our conversation with me asking about what she believes are the biggest legal issues in the IP world today. Gaul did identify several things that stay top of mind for her, with various issues relating to data front and center as the top issue. The second area identified by Gaul was open source, and how many of the AI companies promoting “open source” are really not truly open source because often the model, weights and/or training data are not made available, which makes it seem like these companies are racing to gain market share and ultimately “doing a little bit of a switcheroo.” The third and final thing that Gaul identifies as being constantly top of mind is the overall speed of AI development.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we explore whether artificial intelligence (AI) technology has progressed to the point where it has already achieved consciousness. In a nutshell, the answer is our panel of technologists do not believe AI is very close to achieving consciousness, but that it is indeed possible for AI to reach the point of consciousness, and to even reach the point of self-reflection, which would pose an existential threat to humanity.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a conversation that was recorded at the end of our AI 2025 program in front of a live studio audience.  Joining me were Stephanie Curcio, Clint Mehall, and John Rogitz, who make up the new IPWatchdog Advisory Committee. They have all been long-time attendees at our events, they often speak on panels, they often written articles for us, and now they will help advise me with respect to programs and continue to provide content for IPWatchdog.com. To jumpstart our conversation, I asked Stephanie, Clint and John if there was anything that they heard during our AI program that was surprising. This led into an interesting conversation about the possible existential threat presented by AI, quantum computing, data protection and trade secrets. 

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a conversation with two shareholders from Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, PC. Ed Russavage and John Strand were both speakers on our recently concluded AI 2025 program. As the program wrapped up, and in front of a live studio audience, we sat down to discuss the current state of the industry from a client’s perspective, and focused our conversation on IP risk facing companies and what they can do to mitigate that IP risk.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with my long-time friend Jim Carmichael, who is a former Administrative Patent Judge and the founder of Carmichael IP. In this extended 75-minute conversation, Carmichael discusses ten ways the USPTO could and should fix the PTAB, from fully reclaiming institution authority to eliminating expert witnesses in post grant proceedings to presuming the existence of a nexus for secondary considerations.

This week on this edition of IPWatchdog Unleashed, we speak with Sonja London. Sonia has been general counsel at TactoTek and before that she spent 14 years working for Nokia, where she oversaw Nokia’s consumer electronics licensing, global licensing program for connectivity and video codecs, and was responsible for standardization. Sonja has spent the last year as President of Licensing Executives Society International (LESI), and her time in that role is winding down as LESI’s annual meeting in Singapore approaches at the end of April. Our conversation, which took place April 8, 2025, focuses on intellectual property, globalization, supply chains, licensing and more.