Posts in Podcasts

In this week’s episode of IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with Megan Carpenter, who just recently stepped down as Dean of UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law after more than eight years. Our conversation was part personal journey and business philosophy together with a candid assessment of the IP ecosystem. We tackle emerging issues, including AI’s impact on legal practice and education. And we discuss the role of IP as essential to sustaining innovation in a rapidly evolving global economy, and fostering human creativity, innovation, and economic mobility.

In the latest episode of IPWatchdog Unleashed, I sat down with my good friends Brad Close, who is the Executive Vice President of Transpacific IP, and Jim Carmichael, a former judge on the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences and founder of Carmichael IP. Brad, Jim and I engaged in a candid conversation that provides our unvarnished assessment of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), where it started historically, where it is today, and where it may finally be headed. Bottom line: the PTAB is no longer the automatic execution squad it once was, but durable patent rights will require reform well beyond the agency level.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I sat down with prolific inventor Gil Hyatt, exploring his innovative journey and aspirations to leave a lasting legacy. One of the key highlights of the conversation was Gil’s creation of a non-profit Pioneering AI Foundation, which is aimed at advancing AI technology and bolstering U.S. economic interests. This non-profit organization is set to hold Gil’s substantial portfolio of AI patent applications, which cover his pioneering work dating back to the 1980s, and includes groundbreaking claims in artificial intelligence that could revolutionize sectors like education, manufacturing, and trade.

In the most recent episode of IP Innovators, host Steve Brachmann sits down with Stephanie Curcio, CEO and co-founder of NLPatent, to unpack how AI is reshaping prosecution, search, and the overall workflow across patent professions. Curcio, who began her career in traditional patent drafting and prosecution, explains how early concept-based AI search tools convinced her the profession was on the verge of a seismic shift.

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.

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.

For sports fans, certain moments are etched in memory, like Sid Bream sliding into home to clinch the pennant or Kelee Ringo’s interception to seal a national championship. Even celebratory dances, like Ickey Woods’ “Ickey Shuffle,” become part of the sport’s cultural legacy. These are sequences of planned and unplanned movements, which leads us to ask a question concerning intellectual property law: Can a coach’s football play be copyrighted? The answer, as with many IP issues, relies upon the distinction between a creative, fixed work and a purely functional, evolving activity. While the Ickey Shuffle might find protection in the eyes of the law, the play call that leads to the touchdown likely will not.

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.

As AI adoption accelerates, it is crucial that companies act proactively to develop risk, compliance, and ethical frameworks to ensure sustainable innovation and responsible IP use. On the current episode of Understanding IP Matters, Allison Gaul, a registered patent attorney who evaluates digital products with an eye toward intellectual property strategy, value creation, and legal risk, discusses the aggressive landscape of data acquisition by various AI entities.

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.

In the latest episode of IP Innovators, host Steve Brachmann speaks with Aaron Capron, partner and head of the Patent Office Practice at Finnegan, about how patent prosecution is evolving across AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, and other rapidly developing fields. Throughout the discussion, Capron consistently returns to themes that resonate deeply with experienced patent practitioners: the importance of thinking like an examiner, the need for robust infrastructure to manage complex portfolios, and the reality that legal technology—especially AI—requires thoughtful integration, not simple adoption.

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.

The practice of music sampling, which is the integration of pre-recorded sounds into new musical gestures, experienced a golden, unregulated age in the late 1980s that is almost unimaginable today. Major works like Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) and De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) layered dozens of samples on a single track, while massive commercial hits like Tone-L?c’s “Wild Thing” (1988) openly lifted core musical elements.