Tim Bright

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is going through a significant digital transformation. With the Office seemingly updating its procedures as rapidly as the latest AI model, it’s important to track what this means for IP practice. AI is transforming the tools governing how the Office now processes what is filed, and the Office’s vacillations on AI inventorship should be top of mind for every practitioner.

Standard essential patents (SEPs) don’t generate controversy because people disagree on whether innovation deserves compensation. The controversy runs deeper: everyone agrees it does, but nobody agrees on how much, when, or through which court. That tension was the animating force behind the panel Global SEP Litigation, Licensing and Dealmaking, on day two of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 last month. Moderated by Shawnna Yashar (O’Melveny & Myers LLP), the panel featured Ali Allawi (Warner Bros. Discovery), Matteo Sabattini (Sisvel Group), and David Yurkerwich (Ankura). All four practitioners see the SEP licensing ecosystem from very different vantage points and arrived without a shared script.

If 2025 was the year every IP practice rushed to adopt AI, 2026 is the year the bill comes due — and a striking number of organizations are discovering they have no reliable way to read it. That was the organizing message from IPWatchdog LIVE 2026’s session: The Business Impact of AI in Practice: Calculating ROI in the AI Era.

Since 2024, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued multiple AI-specific guidance documents on inventorship and subject matter eligibility, including the February 2024 Inventorship Guidance, the July 2024 Subject Matter Eligibility Update, and the November 2025 memo rescinding the February 2024 guidance. The pace of change has created a prosecution environment where the strategies that worked 18 months ago may actively undermine a patent application filed today. The inverse is true; applications drafted for today’s guidance may be structurally unprepared for the next revision.

A panel on day three of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 offered the IP community a candid look at how large operating companies actually evaluate and respond to patent assertions. The answers carry direct implications for every practitioner advising clients on the sell side of a transaction. The session, titled The Big Tech View on Patents and the Patent Market, featured Russell Binns (Allied Security Trust (AST)), Ola Adekunle (Google), Caroline Pinkston (Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)), and Dean Geibel (Samtec).