If you don’t know how your intellectual property is being used, when, or by whom, you have little control over it — and are less likely to be paid. The field of digital rights management evolved from the need to track and protect how intangible property, specifically data and software, is accessed at scale. Today, innovative companies like Intertrust Technologies are using the technology to authenticate access and create digital value chains for copyrights, especially audio and visual content, and other assets.

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The use of generative and other forms of artificial intelligence is fueling challenging questions about AI’s relationship to IP rights. Businesses, investors, governments, lawyers and students all are learning as they go. What AI means to IP and how it can be regulated should be a part of every educator’s syllabus. How will students use AI to help them learn? Will the datasets that are being used to train popular AI tools be transparent and accessible? Will these datasets continue to use copyrighted works without compensating copyright owners? If that is the case, copyrights may never be the same, nor trade secrets nor patents, for that matter.

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OpenAI shocked the world when it released its spectacularly helpful, free generative AI platform, ChatGPT, on November 30, 2022. AI has existed in various forms for decades but it has never been so widely accessible or boldly efficient. No one can deny that we’ve been living in an AI world ever since. But ChatGPT is just one example of how AI is being used by businesses. To unpack why and how different forms of artificial intelligence are being adopted by businesses and their impact on intellectual property rights, Bruce Berman hosts two innovative exponents of AI on the seventh episode of the third season of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters.”

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The number of granted design patents has tripled over the past 10 years. To find out why — and how design patents are being used to secure value for innovative products — Bruce Berman interviews IP attorney and design patent litigator Elizabeth Ferrill and Brian Hinman, former Chief IP Officer at Philips, on Episode 6 of Season 3 of his Top 2- ranked podcast, “Understanding IP Matters.”

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IP legend Marshall Phelps joins host Bruce Berman to deliver a masterclass on IP strategy from a business perspective on Episode 5 of Season 3 of the podcast “Understanding IP Matters.” In the 1990s, as vice-president of IP business and licensing at IBM, Phelps’ group generated as much as $2 billion annually by establishing partnerships and focusing on R&D (IBM rarely sued). In 2003, he was personally recruited by Bill Gates to head Microsoft’s IP business, where he was instrumental in helping it become one of the most profitable IP focused businesses ever. He has taught IP strategy at Cornell, USC, Duke, UC Berkeley, and in Japan.

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Patents are supposed to provide the right to exclude others from practicing an invention. In the United States, this has become extremely challenging for smaller businesses. For independent inventors, who pour their time, energy, and resources into commercializing a new idea, patents are personal. They need and rely on the leverage that patents have historically offered. For large companies, the decision to forge ahead irrespective of who “owns” an idea is just business. The consequences of efficient infringement are few and far between. The challenges faced by U.S. inventors who rely on the legal system are well-documented. Suing for patent infringement is not a reliable business strategy, even when willful infringement is found to have occurred, which is rare. What’s an innovator to do?

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Helping audiences understand what intellectual property is, why it’s valuable, and how to use it is an ongoing challenge. The perception that intellectual property is only for attorneys and big companies is widespread. Of course, while that impression is grounded in reality, it’s also inaccurate. At its best, IP helps level the playing field for smaller entities. What can be done to make IP education more relevant and interesting to more people? One solution is to have educators who are not practicing attorneys teach about intellectual property. They are generally able to speak more freely and with less concern for the technical aspects of the law.

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What are ways of making money from patents without suing for patent infringement? In the not-so-distant past, technology companies like Microsoft and IBM signed hundreds of mutually beneficial licensing agreements with a wide range of businesses without resorting to lawsuits. Today, we are more likely to read about tech companies suing one another for patent infringement than negotiating win-win deals. What happened, and how are innovators being affected?

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How does the research that takes place at universities turn into products and services? Before the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, recipients of federal funding for early-stage research, such as universities and federal labs, were not permitted to own the intellectual property they created. Instead, the patents filed on inventions related to federally funded research stayed with the government.

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In Episode 10, Season 2 of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters,” Bruce Berman asks questions about what generative AI means for business, creators, and society. Is the content produced by new tools like Microsoft-owned ChatGPT ownable? Is it ownable via copyright? If it is, who owns it? The human who entered the prompt, or the company that owns the tool? What about the rights of copyright owners whose works were used to train these new tools — sometimes without their consent and often without compensation? To explore how artists and inventors can continue use intellectual property to get paid for their original ideas in an AI-world, Berman hosts Keith Kupferschmid and Lana Love.

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Many people do not understand what intellectual property rights mean, let alone how to use them. This is at least partly due to the absence of intellectual property rights in the classroom. Few undergraduate students learn about IP as part of their required or elective coursework. When IP is taught, it is typically approached from a legal as opposed to business or entrepreneurial perspective — think case law. IP strategy, on the other hand, is largely absent from university departments that are likely to generate new ideas, including engineering, business, art, and medicine. As a result, many creators are unaware that they can use the intellectual property system to help capture the value of what they create — and in the process, benefit themselves, their affiliation and others. To learn about the current state of IP education, Bruce Berman interviewed two longtime university IP educators for Episode 9, Season 2 of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters.” They explore how IP education has evolved, who is doing it, and the tension between the business and the legal side of teaching IP.

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Intellectual property is the primary reason most companies are valuable today, but making investments in inventions and patents isn’t well-understood. As creators develop a roadmap for profiting from their output, understanding the mechanisms for valuing and monetizing intellectual property is crucial. To tease out the intersection of startup funding, intellectual property and litigation, in Episode 8 of Season 2 of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters,” Bruce Berman interviews Efrat Kasznik, president of Foresight Valuation Group, and Adam Gill, founder and managing director of Chicago-based GLS Capital, who are leaders in the field of IP valuation, monetization and litigation funding.

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Inventor, author, and entrepreneur Arlyne Simon believes creative problem solving should be the foundation of every child’s early education. The Intel Corporation biomedical engineer says that failure is a part of every invention’s success, and that we need to learn how to fail to succeed. She is the creator of Abby Invents, a highly regarded series of children’s books about perseverance, the power of learning, and the invention process told from the perspective of a young black girl.  In Episode 7 of Season 2 of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters,” Bruce Berman interviews Simon about the importance of representation, her motivations as an invention educator, and her career as a professional inventor.

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In the United States, our ability to innovate drives our economic advantage. Have policymakers taken that for granted? To find out, Bruce Berman, founder of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, interviewed renowned professor David Teece and Patrick Kilbride of the Global Innovation Policy Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Episode 6, Season 2 of “Understanding IP Matters.” Their wide-ranging conversation explores the relationship between intellectual property rights, investment, and the rule of law.

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Is it a great time to be an inventor or a terrible one? From some corners of the inventing community, the news is doom and gloom, but for Stephen Key, a successful creator and entrepreneur, the opportunities faced by inventive people today are as varied and exciting as the challenges. Patents, he believes, are a tool to help people share their creativity. To commercialize some products they are absolutely necessary, but to bring others to market they may not be needed. In an industry where inventors are regularly charged tens of thousands of dollars for help with inventions that will never make it to market, his unique perspective and commitment to giving back to the next generation of creators have earned him a large following.

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