If you’ve come across a national news story about some brash character making lots of money from patent deals, chances are that the person making those deals happen behind the scenes was an unassuming lawyer in Israel. Her name is Lillian Shaked. On this episode, Lillian tells the story of how she went from being a commercial attorney in Israel to working with who’s who of patent monetization legends around the world and likely working on more major patent deals than any other attorney in the wo...
Mar 10, 2023•45 min
Kathi Vidal returns to the Clause 8 podcast to talk about her first year as the Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In an expansive conversation, Director Vidal talks about what she hopes to accomplish, explains and defends the current process for exploring and making changes to the patent system, and responds to criticisms regarding the state of the system. Even close observers of her time as Director are bound to be surprised by many comments she offers on this episode. On ...
Feb 24, 2023•57 min
Five-time world jump rope champion Molly Metz and her husband Dirk Tomsin talk about the highs and lows of innovation, entrepreneurship, and relying on America’s patent system. A serious car accident spurred Molly to invent a new type of jump rope that revolutionized jump roping and the use of jump roping for CrossFit. Thanks to patents that were awarded to her by the US Patent Office (USPTO) for the invention, Molly’s company – JumpNrope – started making the jump ropes completely in America and...
Feb 10, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Bruce Berman is the PR guru of the IP world. As CEO of Brody Berman Associates, he has implemented marketing and business development programs on behalf of more than 200 IP portfolios and businesses. And, in 2016, he founded the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding , an independent non-profit that raises awareness of the use and impact of intellectual property on individuals and businesses. He is also the host of the Understanding IP Matters podcast . In this episode of the Clause 8 Po...
Jan 27, 2023•45 min
Qualcomm is responsible for the smartphone revolution. It started working on the technology back when many thought it was impossible. Besides everyday users, one of the biggest beneficiaries of Qualcomm’ technology was Apple. Apple relied on the technology to make iPhones that grew its market cap to a record of $3 Trillion. However, eventually, Apple decided it was paying Qualcomm too much for the technology. And, instead of agreeing to one fair arbitration process to settle the dispute, Apple d...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 2 min
What is outside counsel’s real job? How do you make patents part of a 100-year-old company’s DNA? Why did Ocean Tomo fail to become the Goldman Sachs of patents? How do you get opposing counsel to offer you a dream job? The Renaissance Man of IP – Raymond Millien – shares these secrets on the latest episode of Clause 8. Ray previously served as Chief IP Office at Volvo and is now the CEO of the IP boutique, Harness IP. Prior to that, Ray served as the general counsel of a groundbreaking IP busin...
Apr 26, 2022•57 min
Show Notes Is it preferable for patent cases to be handled by district court judges who have relevant expertise and experience? Senator Leahy can’t make up his mind. Leahy’s eponymous Leahy-Smith American Invents Act created the Patent Pilot Program. The program allowed federal district court judges in select districts to volunteer to handle patent cases. The goal was for certain judges to have increased expertise – and as a result – do a better job. However, after the program expired and Judge ...
Apr 12, 2022•59 min
How is patent policy made in Congress? Few know better than Philip Warrick. Phil served as Senator Coons’ top IP advisor after Coons helped restart the Senate’s IP Subcommittee. In that role, Phil helped lead the subcommittees’ efforts to improve America’s patent system, including legislation to fix the patent eligibility mess. Those efforts were a dramatic departure from Congress’s previous fixation on the “patent troll” narrative. After Coons friend and fellow Delawarean, Joe Biden, was electe...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 5 min
The golden age for patent brokers has come and gone but that doesn’t stop Louis Carbonneau. “There are very, very few patent brokers nowadays. We’re just one of a handful left. And frankly, we get about four or five portfolios every single day that people want us to broker. We only say yes 1% or 2% of the time.” As one of the world’s leading patent brokers, the CEO and Founder of Tangible IP has brokered over 4,500 patents and boasts close to 30 years in the industry. With experience as Microsof...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Good lawyers effectively deal with the present. Very few have what it takes to create the future. Professor Ryan Abbott is doing just that. He leads the DABUS project: the first time ever an AI machine has been named as an inventor on a patent application. Most thought that the project was an interesting academic exercise that was unlikely to go anywhere. Some - uncharitably - dismissed it as "a publicity stunt." Yet, the DABUS project did get a patent in South Africa. And, an Australian judge r...
Mar 01, 2022•55 min
Prof. Dan Brown and his son, Dan Brown Jr., are straight out of central casting. Prof. Brown, the father, grew up in a working-class Irish family on Chicago’s South Side before eventually becoming a professor of engineering at Northwestern University. Dan Jr. is a moppy-haired marketing genius who is now President of LoggerHead Tools. As a result of a father-son argument, Prof. Brown invented an award-winning tool called the Bionic Wrench and pursued the audacious idea of manufacturing it in ent...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 10 min
The first episode of this season of Clause 8 featured the most recent USPTO Director - Andrei Iancu - discussing his efforts to strengthen America’s patent system over the last three years. One of the most publicly vocal opponents of those efforts was Josh Landau, patent counsel at the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA). Now that those views are in ascendancy in the Biden administration and Congress, it made sense to finish this season by talking to Josh. It was Josh who fir...
Jul 06, 2021•53 min
“Jeff [Roh] knew for every person like [him], who is able to succeed, there's countless others who aren't. They just fall flat because they encounter resistance and give up. And so he was on a mission to make other inventors and surgeons be successful as well." Don’t miss this latest episode of Clause 8 with President and Chief Legal Officer of IntuitiveX, Mark Han, about the new business model they have created to help innovators in the medical field. Mark cut his teeth working for the largest ...
Jun 29, 2021•49 min
Chris Agrawal is President of the Association of Intellectual Property Firms and partner at Bookoff McAndrews. He was instrumental in one of the biggest patent transactions in history and the reason Eli got into patent law in the first place. If you’re a startup founder or an executive at a growth stage company worrying about patent protection or wondering how to scale your patent program, download and listen to this episode today. On how AIPF helped IP firms navigate the pandemic: “I was really...
Jun 22, 2021•48 min
We hope you've enjoyed the episodes we've released so far in this season. We'll be taking a short break and will release the rest of the season very soon. For more information, visit voiceofip.com . And, if you would like to learn more about my firm, visit harrityllp.com . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.voiceofip.com...
Jun 08, 2021•2 min
If you’ve ever wondered how and why Judge Alan D Albright - of the Western District Texas - became America’s go-to judge for patent cases, you don’t want to miss this episode. Before Judge Albright was confirmed in 2018, less than 10 patent cases had been filed in Waco district in its entire history. In 2020 alone, he took on almost 800 new patent cases, accounting for 20% of all new patent cases filed in the US last year. “Having practised all those years, I get that 99% of the time, while it m...
Jun 01, 2021•1 hr 4 min
How many Supreme Court Justices can you count as friends? Professor Stephen Yelderman, one of America’s leading IP scholars, was recruited to join the Notre Dame Law School faculty by future Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch before and after he joined the Supreme Court. Prof. Yelderman’s experience of having a personal connection to not one, but two Supreme Court justices, as well as having clerked at the Supreme Court, have provided him with a unique ...
May 25, 2021•56 min
At the end of last year, IPWatchdog asked leaders in the field about their wildest dreams for America’s IP system. The most common answer was for former director of the USPTO Andrei Iancu to continue on as director. Former Deputy USPTO Director Russ Slifer noted that Andrei will be a hard act to follow. Andrei immigrated from communist Romania when he was 13 years old, and still, to this day, believes the US is the best place to be for freedom and opportunity. “I'm a huge fan of innovation and c...
May 18, 2021•44 min
Judge Joe Lentivech is a former Administrative Patent Judge. On this episode, he talks about how he became an Administrative Patent Judge, how the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) operates, how to win ex parte appeals, overcoming Section 101 rejections, oral hearings at the PTAB, and much more! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.voiceofip.com...
Nov 24, 2020•1 hr 39 min
Brad Watts is the Majority Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Under the leadership of Sen. Thom Tillis, Brad led the herculean effort to fix the Section 101, patent eligibility mess. In this episode, Eli and Brad talk what really happened during this last attempt at reform, why it wasn’t successful, where to go from here, and much more. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus epi...
Sep 21, 2020•55 min
Welcome to Clause 8 – the Voice of IP. Clause 8 is part of IPWatchdog and hosted by Eli Mazour. If you enjoy listening, please subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, share it with others, and leave a five-star rating. This episode features an interview with Professor Adam Mossoff from George Mason University’s Scalia Law School. He is the leading academic expert when it comes to intellectual property policy issues. Most significantly, he is largely responsible for providing the intellectual ...
Sep 01, 2020•1 hr 5 min
This episode features an interview with Bruce MacEwen. He is the founder and president of Adam Smith, Esq. and has written thousands of articles on the economics of law firms. He is recognized as the world’s leading expert in this subject and provides advice to a select number of law firms about how to succeed in the changing legal landscape. During this episode, Bruce and Eli discuss: • Why Bruce thought there was something off about law firms by Thanksgiving of his first year as an associate •...
Aug 04, 2020•43 min
This episode features an interview with Sarah Tsou, who is an investment manager for patent litigation at the world’s leading litigation funder, Bentham IMF (now part of Omni Bridgeway Limited). The playbook is simple for deep-pocketed defendants facing lawsuits from patent owners with limited resources. Even if a patent owner has a very strong case, the defendant can just drag the case out long enough until the patent owner and his lawyers run out of resources to continue. At best, the patent o...
Jun 02, 2020•54 min
This episode of Clause 8 features an interview with Brian Pomper of the Innovation Alliance. Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Charles Goodyear are some of America’s best-known innovators. Instead of just making and selling the final products, they obtained patents and licensed their innovations to manufacturers. American companies like IBM, Qualcomm, and Dolby have followed this great American tradition of focusing on innovation. However, the patent troll narrative has undermined the idea...
May 19, 2020•1 hr 4 min
This episode features an interview with trial attorney Frank Jakes - the founder of the Intellectual Property Group at the firm of Johnson Pope in Tampa, FL. There’s a good chance that you have recently seen him questioning Joe Exotic in the Netflix documentary Tiger King. However, even before successfully representing Carole Baskin and Big Cat Rescue, Frank Jakes was already a legendary trial attorney in Tampa who handled lots of cases involving high-profile parties and interesting personalitie...
May 05, 2020•1 hr 10 min
The latest episode of the Clause 8 podcast features an interview with Josh Malone – the inventor of Bunch O Balloons and America’s foremost advocate for reliable patent rights. Josh came up with the idea for Bunch O Balloons to help his kids fill up 100 water balloons in less than one minute. It eventually became the most popular toy in America. However, before Bunch O Balloons even came to market, another company copied it and started selling its own versions of the product. Luckily – or so he ...
Mar 18, 2020•1 hr 3 min
This episode is the second and final part of our interview with Kevin Jakel, the founder and CEO of Unified Patents. On this episode, we continue the conversation with Kevin about how Unified Patents operates, discuss Unified Patents’ new program for targeting Standard Essential Patents (SEPs), debate whether the patent troll narrative has been overblown, talk about the patent quality problem, and delve into some other patent policy issues related to IPRs and the PTAB. We also find out what Kevi...
Jan 21, 2020•42 min
Kevin Jakel is the founder and CEO of Unified Patents. Since the passage of the American Invents Act (AIA), Unified Patents has been focused on using AIA’s new post-grant proceedings to challenge patents at the PTAB that are owned by so-called non-practicing entities or “patent trolls.” This is an amazing story of rare and impressive innovation in the patent field. It is also a story about how the AIA allowed third parties – that are not directly involved in a patent dispute - to “independently”...
Jan 07, 2020•36 min
Gene Quinn is the founder of IPWatchdog.com . It has been the leading online publication focused on intellectual property for almost twenty years. Although they don't always agree, Federal Circuit judges, Congressional staffers, and K Street follow it closely to stay abreast of latest IP policy-related developments. During the episode, Gene discusses the serendipitous start to IPWatchdog.com , why it has been so successful, and what it's like to be read by Federal Circuit judges and other lumina...
Sep 10, 2019•1 hr 15 min
Gil Hyatt is one of the most significant American innovators in the field of personal computing - the inventor of the microprocessor. And, he has been involved in a David versus Goliath battle with the US Patent and Trademark Office for decades. Initially, Gil was able to successfully obtain patents for his innovations and license them for hundreds of millions of dollars. However, in the mid 1990s, the USPTO started secretly flagging his applications under the Sensitive Applications Warning Syst...
Jul 16, 2019•57 min
