Posts in Podcasts

This is a companion episode and article to Episode 1 which touched on whether there is potential friction between the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) AI subject matter eligibility guidance and the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (“2019 PEG”). Practitioners have noted that Example 39 of the 2019 PEG is seemingly less effective in overcoming Section 101 rejections following the issuance of the AI Guidance, particularly in light of Example 47, which dealt with training limitations, while Example 39 was a training claim. I’m here to say that there is no conflict between the examples and the two guidance documents overall and to explain why you should come to this conclusion too.

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. 

Many people swear the lyrics were “I’m stuck on Band-Aid, ‘cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me.” And they’re right, but only sort of. What feels like a Mandela Effect moment is actually the result of a quiet legal pivot. In the late 1980s, the company changed the jingle to say “Band-Aid brand,” adding a single word to help protect their trademark from something called genericide.

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.

As more and more states relax restrictions on both medical and recreational uses of marijuana and hemp, the U.S. cannabis industry is projected to reach $50 billion in sales this year and over $74.6 billion by 2032. This rapid growth is occurring despite immense challenges posed by a complex and conflicting web of legal disparities between federal and state laws. These legal challenges include limited access to financial institutions and the inability to transport products across state lines, but what about patents?

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.

Some of the largest companies have invested substantial resources to change the rules of the game that govern bargaining over IP assets . This drives downward value of for all IP assets and content in tech markets and endangers innovation, creative expression and society. On the current episode of Understanding IP Matters (UIPM), Jonathan Barnett, a legal scholar focusing on the weaknesses and strengths of the U.S. intellectual property (IP) system, discusses potential ways to repair it. The shift created by companies that underpin these weaknesses is “hard to overstate,” he explains, and has largely been underappreciated.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, we speak with James Edwards, a property rights advocate, lobbyist and now also the author of the forthcoming book To Invent Is Divine: Creativity and Ownership, which addresses the disconnect between the attributes of creativity and ownership and human innovation, technological progress, and practical benefits from human creativity and ownership in combination. “There’s something much larger and more fundamental about the the existence of creativity and the inherent ownership that normatively connects with each other,” Edwards explains. “Ownership has to come with creativity. If you’ve got creative ability but you don’t have ownership of what you make that doesn’t work.”

The thrill of a band putting their own spin on a beloved song is undeniable. But even more thrilling? Telling someone a song they love is actually a cover. Today’s example is Luke Combs’ chart-topping ‘Fast Car’, which is actually a reimagining of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 classic. Regardless, behind the respectful nod to re-record an iconic musical number is a complex web of copyright law.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, we present the remarks made during the Award Ceremony at IPWatchdog LIVE 2025 on March 3, 2025. This year we once again presented two awards at IPWatchdog LIVE; the Paul Michel Award and the Pauline Newman Award. These two awards give us a special opportunity for us to do a couple different things. First and most directly, they enable us to recognize the extremely distinguished careers of the recipients of the awards. But second, this gives us an opportunity to recognize the distinguished careers of two people who have been very instrumental in my development as a professional, and who have been instrumental on our development as a company.

Some say overregulation of AI will impede development. One innovation policy expert believes both AI and IP rights need a clearer context for AI to operate productively. On the current episode of Understanding IP Matters (UIPM), Dr. Brandie M. Nonnecke, a policy expert with a background in journalism, discusses what responsible AI should be and says that regulation of AI is necessary and, if done properly, will not stifle innovation. Nonnecke knows the reluctance about regulation is a “knee jerk reaction by companies [and] investors to evade oversight,” she says, adding: “But let’s remember that regulation can actually spur a more competitive environment, a more competitive market for them to operate within.”

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.

If a court stripped away your property rights, wouldn’t you at least want an explanation? In this month’s episode of Patently Strategic, we discuss the Federal Circuit’s practice of applying rule 36 at an alarming rate to revoke inventors’ patent rights on appeal without explanation and ParkerVisions attempt to get the Supreme Court to take the case to hopefully stop this innovation-crippling practice.

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.