Posts in Interviews & Conversations

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.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed I speak with my friend Jason Harrier, former Chief Patent Counsel at Capital One and current co-founder and General Counsel of artificial intelligence (AI) company IP Copilot. I started our conversation by asking Harrier about invention harvesting, which I know from many conversations with in-house attorneys is one of the more difficult but critical important aspects of their job. We begin with a simple question: Why is invention harvesting so difficult and why are in-house attorneys always talking about in terms of what they tried in the past, what they are currently trying and what they hope to try in the future, sounding a little like Goldilocks looking for what is just right, but always out of reach.

Lisa Jorgenson is Deputy Director General for Patents and Technology at WIPO. Jorgenson gave a keynote speech at IPWatchdog LIVE 2025 on Monday, March 3. Jorgenson focused primarily on two questions. First, what are the key trends driving global innovation today? Second, what do those key trends mean for the IP community and the innovators and creators? Jorgenson also came with eye-popping facts and figures, pointing out that global intangibles are valued at over $80 trillion, which is more than the world’s five largest economies combined. And she said the world’s leading brands are now worth over $13 trillion, with 45% of the value being located in the United States.

Further to reports that Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) judges will soon be required to return to the office, the lingering question for many is what effect the order—as well as the current, indefinite hiring freeze—will have on Supervisory Patent Examiners (SPEs) at the Office and on day to day operations of the examining corps more broadly.

This week we speak with Scott McKeown, who is a shareholder at Wolf Greenfield and one of the leading U.S. PTAB practitioners. Our conversation was wide ranging but was dominated by discussion of patent reform efforts and whether the PTAB is working as intended. We discuss bad patents, PTAB reform and more.

The focus of our conversation was entrepreneurship, particularly the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurs looking to dive into the startup world with an innovative product. The road to building and monetizing a better mouse trap requires ingenuity and the identification of opportunity, but it requires funding.

My conversation this week with John White was much like any number of conversations we have had over the years over dinner or drinks. What prompted me to ask John to speak with us this week was an article he recently wrote, which we published on IPWatchdog. It was styled as an open letter to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the incoming co-leaders of the soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency. In that article John explains that “the patent system is currently foundered”, but that it can be fixed with “focus and ongoing commitment to see the fixes through to results.” So, that is where we start our conversation, like so many we have had over the last 26 years—what is wrong with the patent system and how should it be fixed.

My conversation this week with John White was much like any number of conversations we have had over the years over dinner or drinks. What prompted me to ask John to speak with us this week was an article he recently wrote, which we published on IPWatchdog. It was styled as an open letter to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the incoming co-leaders of the soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency. In that article John explains that “the patent system is currently foundered”, but that it can be fixed with “focus and ongoing commitment to see the fixes through to results.” So, that is where we start our conversation, like so many we have had over the last 26 years—what is wrong with the patent system and how should it be fixed.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we speak with Heath Hoglund, President of Via Licensing Alliance. The conversation takes us deep into the world of audio, video, standard essential patents, patent pools, patent licensing, patent dealmaking, inevitable patent litigation that is often necessary when so much money is at stake, and much more.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we go back in time for a historical conversation about the role patents have played with respect to innovation, and push back on the myth that patents were not necessary for the innovations that took place during the Industrial Revolution. In fact, virtually every invention of consequence during the Industrial Revolution was patented, and patents played a major role in encouraging investment and innovations actually making it to market, just as patents continue to play a similar vital role in the virtuous cycle of innovation. We speak with Arthur Daemrich about the invention of the video game by Ralph Baer, Samuel Colt and his mass produced, fully interchangeable six-shooter, which revolutionized manufacturing. We also discuss Henry Ford, Elon Musk, George Washington, and much more.

Our conversation this week focuses on Spaceport Technologies, which is a technology company that enables brand owners to monetize their IP and game platforms to offer content creators the ability to license the use of those brands within their game environment. To provide these licensed in-game experiences Spaceport uses innovative technology that reduces transaction costs and allows for the monetization of intellectual property assets. In fact, through the use of Spaceport protocols and apps the acquisition of rights and payment for those rights through numerous small dollar value transactions is not just faster and easier, the deals actually become possible.

This week my conversation is with Carlo Cotrone, who is a Chief IP Counsel and frequent contributor to IPWatchdog, both our online publication and at our in-person programs. During our conversation we discuss taking a holistic view that focuses on the IP strategy, the people, and the operational aspects of building and managing a team, which includes both in-house employees, outside law firms and service providers, all working together in coordination to deliver high impact for the company. We also discuss the need to guard against your in-house team falling into doing commoditized work, which gets in the way of your in-house team really partnering with the business and maximizing value for the company.

This week my conversation is with Leo White, who is Chief IP Counsel and Associate General Counsel for The Duracell Company. During our conversation we begin by briefly talking about patent strategy, but then move quickly to brand protection, trademarks, trade dress and effectively working with customs agencies around the world. While Duracell does patent its various battery technologies, and while White is responsible for maintaining a worldwide patent portfolio for the company, the company’s trademark and trade dress portfolio are the IP tools of choice used most often when working to fight the never-ending battle against counterfeiters and copycats, and to also protect against gray market imports.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, my conversation is with Brian Hinman, who is one of the leading IP executives and investors in the world. Brian has held senior executive positions at leading technology companies, such as IBM, Philips and Verizon. During our conversation, Hinman explains how Cote provides capital for scaling manufacturing and operations with IP assets-backed investment and with those assets including designs, patents, trade secrets, know-how, copyrights, proprietary equipment, customer contracts and even data. The way Hinman describes this IP asset-backed investment strategy sounds a lot more owner-friendly and startup-friendly than a typical venture capital round of investment. Which is not to say anything bad about venture capital or the venture capital business, but when VCs come in, they often want quite a lot of the company, frequently more than half of the company, in order to make an investment. We also discuss pending legislation, particularly the RESTORE Act, and who President-elect Trump should nominate to be the next Director of the USPTO.