¶ Building a Profitable IP Portfolio
One common mistake I see a lot of inventors make on the patent side is they're out there telling people about their invention , talking to their invention , trying to get investors , trying to get money to move forward , not realizing that that could compromise their ability to patent what's up my friends , welcome back to another episode of Life Beyond the Briefs , the
podcast where lawyers like you break free from the grind and start living life on your own terms .
Today , I'm thrilled to sit down with my good friend , rick Martin , an intellectual property powerhouse , who's here to spill the secrets on building a multi-million dollar IP portfolio . In this episode , we're diving deep into why so many small businesses are leaving money on the table when it comes to their IP .
Rick shares why understanding technology is a game changer for patent law and how AI is transforming the way we market legal services . Plus , he's got some eye-opening insights on public disclosure that could save you and your clients a fortune . So if you're ready to turn your legal practice into a profit machine and protect what truly matters , buckle up .
Let's explore how to navigate the world of intellectual property with Rick Martin and discover how to thrive beyond the briefs .
Hello everybody , welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs , the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design and not build practices that they are beholden to and that they don't like showing up to on Monday . Today's guest is Rick Martin . Rick is a lawyer in Indiana . He is the first IP lawyer that I've had on this show .
The thing for most lawyers who go to courts and trials like we don't know a lot of guys like Rick , right , and I suspect maybe you don't know a whole lot of trial lawyers we can get into that . So , rick , welcome to the show . I'm excited for the audience to learn a lot from you about all the things that we have forgotten since law school .
Thanks , brian , I appreciate you having me on here today .
Rick is also the author of a book called how to Build a Multi-Million Dollar IP Portfolio . And , Rick , you help clients and companies with building and then protecting the IP portfolio and often like figuring out what kind of intellectual property problems do you have that you don't even know about right ?
Yeah , and that's kind of what the book focuses on . And really one of my primary offerings to clients is a fractional IP counsel plan where we do that we work with them proactively , not reactively , to kind of get in there and work with them to identify what their IP is and then strategize with them on how to best protect it .
What do you find to be kind of the average level of knowledge of a small or medium-sized business about its IP portfolio when they first come to you ?
It varies to some degree depending on their background and their knowledge , but it's usually pretty low .
I would say one client in particular that I'm working with now I think they did come in with a fairly high level because a lot of the at least a couple of the engineers that are heading the department I am working with are former engineers that worked at Whirlpool Corporation , which used to be headquartered here in Evansville , indiana , and so they had a pretty
good background of IP and that was because they had in-house counsel there at Whirlpool . So really , unless you've got somebody that's coming from a bigger company that has had that experience of working with an in-house counsel , the knowledge base is usually pretty low .
Right , it's whatever you can find on Google , and so the injury lawyers have the same problem with clients , which is some of the things that you know , just aren't true . So kind of walk me through your process .
When a new client , new company calls you for the first time and they say I've got this piece of technology and I want to make sure that it's protected , like what are the kind of next steps that you take with them to make sure that everything that they have is protected from competition ?
Yeah , so usually the first step we take is , you know , kind of gather some information from them , obviously , run the conflict check , make sure we don't have any issues there with representing any clients that compete with them directly , and then we'll set up a strategy session for them where they'll either come in and meet with me or we might do it via Zoom or
online , depending on where they're located . We represent clients all over the country , so if they're not located here in Indiana where they're an easy drive to me , we can set up the meeting on Zoom . And , you know , in that initial strategy session we'll kind of gather the information about what their technology is and typically make certain recommendations .
Based on the outcome of that . Nine out of ten times , the first thing I'm going to recommend they do is let's do a patentability search and study to see if this is even something that is patentable , or if it's been done before , or if there's something out there that's been done that's very close that might make getting a patent difficult .
That's usually step one .
The conflict check piece is interesting and I hadn't thought about direct competitors . So for me it's like I look at the name on the police report for the defendant and if I haven't represented that defendant or if I'm not currently representing the defendant , we're clear of the conflict check .
For somebody like you , if , let's say , a software company in the legal technology space comes to you , are you relying on them to give you like the five or 10 competitor list , or how do you figure out and maybe you just know I have somebody who's in that space but what's the process for checking conflicts ?
on that , and usually it's the latter . I just know one of the things we do as part of our fractional IP council plan if we have clients that are on that is we monitor what their competitors are doing as far as patenting things and protecting their IP so that we can work around that and anticipate what their competitors are doing .
So conflict check is fairly simple from that standpoint . I pretty well know who their competitors are because I'm already watching their stuff .
And the cool thing about your practice is it's nationwide and it's not just . You're not restricted by state balance to Indiana , right .
Yeah , yeah . So patents , trademarks , copyrights they're all covered under federal law . So that's the same for anybody , whether they're in Indiana , whether they're in California , New York , Florida . Registering a trademark or obtaining a patent before the patent office is the same , regardless of where somebody's located .
So , yeah , we do represent people pretty much nationwide .
Have you found , in terms of building a business , that it's like easier to convert or harder to convert somebody who's local to you than it is somebody who's in , I don't know , alabama or Washington state ?
You know , strangely enough it's sometimes easier to convert the ones that are out of state or further away and I think they usually come to me by referral , not other means , and I think that makes it easier to convert those into actual clients because we're not really doing any active advertising or promotion there and if somebody in California Google's patent attorney
near me , I'm probably not going to pop up . So those tend to be easier rather than more difficult to convert just because somebody's told them , hey , go talk to them .
And when we were together in Phoenix two months ago and I've forgotten where we were Rick's a member of the Hero Mastermind Group at Greenlink Marketing and you were showing us some of the things that you were doing in Indiana and in a couple of you had identified major cities nearby you where you were beginning to run PPC and maybe LSAs . Has that taken off ?
How's that going ?
So we did that I started working with a new marketing team probably mid-summer , late summer , saw some initial improvements and results from what we were getting previously and then I cut them loose , I think , was it ?
Yeah , because we ran it for two months , so it must have been right around the 1st of October , and that was right around the time the book came out too .
So we ran some meta ads , some Google paper clicks , some things like that , and we were running them in Indianapolis , louisville and some of the larger markets that are within a couple hours of us , just to kind of test things out that are within a couple hours of us . Just to kind of test things out .
We went from getting 20 leads a month to 60 or 80 leads a month . Based on that , and I actually had to tell them at that point I'm like , okay , this is great , shut it off . I had to shut it off because I'm like we don't have the manpower or the resources to follow up with those . So I told him shut it down .
We immediately advertised for an intake specialist , which I just did my last interview for yesterday . I've got two very promising candidates , so we're going to fill that position soon . I just have to decide which one . Once we get that person onboarded and trained and up to speed , we'll turn that back on and have somebody that can follow up with those leads .
All right . So I'm really curious now because we don't often talk to lawyers who have shut off the marketing because it worked too well , right .
And we're kind of going through the same thing in my law firm , which is we've signed up 60% more cases on the auto accident side year over year and coming into the year , our constraint was either leads or sales , kind of depending on how you looked at it . Now that constraint is fine and I'm looking at our 2025 going .
I don't know how we're going to meet production on all of these and you must have done the exact same thing as you were , although it sounds like maybe your constraint was sales , right .
And the following year .
You're not converting them . Do you have the production set up if you get the intake person in and they're working really well .
To a certain point I do . I mean , from a production side . I've got me , and then I've got a paralegal that handles a lot of stuff . I've got a couple of attorneys that do some work for me on a contract basis when I get overloaded .
So that's really kind of what I'm going to rely on is sort of a stopgap measure until it gets to a point where there's enough work to hire another attorney , and then we'll probably bring an attorney on board .
So that's kind of the plan going forward as far as the production , because , yeah , that's going to be the next problem I run into if all of this works well .
This is the thing that nobody ever knows . Like do I have enough work to hire another lawyer and to support another lawyer ? Yeah , and it's the problem that as soon as you solve the leads problem , it's the very next thing that comes up .
And then you start worrying about , well , what happens if the algorithm shifts or whatever , and the leads shut off and I'm stuck with this lawyer who I committed to and maybe who came from some other office . And so what are you paying attention to , either metric-wise or caseload-wise , to help you make that decision ?
And really it's throughout the process how many leads are we getting ? Are they qualified leads ? What's our conversion rate on those leads ? And really those are the primary metrics . The value of the cases are pretty consistent in what we do . So patent cases are usually more valuable than a trademark case , you know , dollar-wise , but they take more time .
So you know , we're just kind of looking at that mix and we've got , you know , kind of targets set for what we need to achieve for the first quarter and targets for growth beyond there . The plan is to grow this to where , by probably Q3 , we're looking at hiring an attorney , if not sooner .
Who else is on the team right now ?
It's just me and then my assistant , olivia , and then I've got a bookkeeper . That's part-time , and then again , like I said , I had an in-house marketing person . When she left , we decided to take that to an outsourced team here . That's local in Evansville and they've been killing it . They've been doing a good job .
So they're part of the team but they're not , you know , in-house working directly for me .
So and so when you say we have things , things that we're looking at , metrics and goals , you're you mean you , yeah , yeah yeah , that's , that's the challenge of growing , uh , the business at at this stage like it's . You know , if you hire somebody and it fails quote fails it gets all back on you and say I want to make sure that you have this right .
You have everything done in the right order . Right , because doing the right thing but out of order is , it just creates a different set of problems .
Yep , it does , and we've made those mistakes before .
Yeah , me too , and I'm going to make them again . I'm sure what is ?
If there's somebody out there that's listening , who is , you know , college or law school is , who's thinking about a ip or transactional or general counsel role , what , what are , um , the career steps or the , the building blocks that you think make up a somebody who can be successful in this role ?
so kind of looking back at my process and where I came from , uh , if you want to do the patent side of things , if you want to write patent applications and do transactions before the patent office and represent people in that capacity , you got to even go back a little further than law school because you have to have , in order to sit for the patent bar and
to prosecute applications before the patent office , you have to have an engineering undergraduate degree or chemistry , science , some sort of technical undergrad degree to even sit for the patent bar . So if you're interested in that aspect of it or if you have that background already , that makes you a good fit , I think , to do the IP work .
Now there are people out there that do what we refer to as soft IP , which is just the trademarks copyright . Think to do the IP work . Now there are people out there that do what we refer to as soft IP , which is just the trademarks copyrights and trade secret side of it , because they're not licensed as a patent attorney .
But that's probably a good place to start and , again , just getting that experience as you go along
¶ Understanding Technology for Patent Law
. I , I ended up , I got , I got an engineering degree from Purdue and , uh , from there ended up working at the patent office and going to law school at night .
So so I was actually doing the other side of what I do now , uh , which is really invaluable , uh experience , you know , for me , uh , as a patent attorney , knowing what the other side's looking at , what they want to see , how they want to see it and what a lot of their considerations are .
You know , maybe even just from an administrative standpoint , that most people don't know Do you have a sense of what percentage of the patent bar used to work at the patent and trademark office .
Wow , I really don't . I think it's pretty low , though OK .
Yeah Well , we were talking with John Fauché , who's a tax and bankruptcy lawyer , who's like the entire pipeline for tax lawyers is used to work for the IRS , for tax lawyers is used to work for the IRS . It's interesting that it's a unique subset that has been on the other side and has seen what the Patent and Trademark Office is looking for .
Everybody wants to talk about AI . Does AI make your job easier or harder ?
I think overall it makes it easier Again . We use AI for a lot of our marketing to generate first drafts for blog posts or scripts for videos or whatever we're working on there on the marketing side , so it really is a big time saver in that area for us . I'm just now starting to experiment with using it to help draft patent applications .
I'm not finding it terribly helpful in that regard yet , but there are some resources out there that have been kind of pitching to me to say , hey , you know , we've got these tools to help you draft patent applications , try them out . I've been skeptical and I'm testing them now .
I haven't found one that's particularly useful in my opinion , it seems to me again , knowing absolutely nothing about patent and trademark office , but it seems to me that would be a good government application . It's an initial screen that's done by some computer or some AI . Maybe that's already happening and I just don't know about it .
But I think it would be harder on your end crafting the application , but easier to use it as a large database screen . For does something like this already exist somewhere within the patent and trademark world ?
Yeah , I mean , I kind of have been thinking what would work . Maybe I need to develop my own AI app for doing it .
I think about it because , to me , what would work you know how I could , you know , find something that would help with drafting a patent application would be , you know , again , it's like everything else with AI you know what you put into it is what you get out of it .
And you know , my thinking is that if I were to conduct , you know , an interview with the inventor and record that , whether it's on Zoom or whatever platform I'm using , and you know if I , you know , and if I direct and control that interview to a degree where , okay , let's talk about this , let's talk about this , let's talk about this , and I kind of step
them through the process and then I can feed that into an AI to generate a patent application . Something like that , I think , might be fairly useful to get a first draft .
What is the role for the patent lawyer of actually understanding what the piece of technology or software does ?
Oh , I mean , I think it's critical . I mean you have to understand what it does , because part of the application drafting process is you have to provide what's called an enabling disclosure of the invention .
Disclosure of the invention and that is you know , you have to describe it in detail that a what's called a person of ordinary skill in the art could read it , understand it and practice the invention . So so , in order to do that , as as the attorney , you have to understand the invention in order to describe it to somebody else so that they can do it .
So how much of your time is then spent ? You're kind of in what I would call the legal research world and and in the versus in the like technological research world , like , oh , that's a cool idea , but I don't know anything about it .
Let me go learn so that I can fill out the application yeah , and every now and then I I do have to do that . I have to learn about the technology . Uh , you know , because it's always evolving , it's there's always something new , something different .
And yes , so , you know , a lot of times , if it's always evolving , there's always something new , something different . And yes , so , a lot of times , if it's simple mechanical stuff and that's a lot of what I deal with or fairly simple electronic or electrical stuff , I don't really have to do a lot of research on what the technology is .
But yeah , there are times where I've got something that comes in and I'm like , oh , I've got to go learn about this and figure it out . Yeah , there are times where I've got something that comes in and I'm like , oh , I got to go learn about this and figure it out . In fact , I recently , I'm still in the process of drafting something .
¶ Navigating the Patent Application Process
It was it's kind of funny , because I did the initial draft of the application . Of the whole time I'm writing this application , I'm like this doesn't , this doesn't make sense , this , this doesn't work . And I , you know , but and I sent the draft to the client I'm like , I'm not real comfortable with this .
And of course , then he mentions oh yeah , there was a critical part I forgot to tell you about and I'm like , okay , well , now it makes sense . So we had that additional conversation and I'm like , okay , now I understand how this works . But as I was putting it together yeah , that was a problem I had was I'm like this just doesn't make sense .
So , yeah , and it was again , it was part of that doing the research as I was going along , because I understood the technology from a 30,000 foot level but I didn't understand it well enough to draft the application until I got in there to do it , and then it just didn't make sense because he'd forgotten to tell me a critical part .
Yeah , it's the same thing as like trying to learn the medicine to prosecute a medical malpractice case or to protect somebody's auto accident claim .
Right , it's like that can become distractingly interesting as you try to understand a surgery or an operation or something like that , and so have you found yourself in rabbit holes where you're like , yeah , you know what . Actually , maybe I should go become an inventor .
Every now and then , and sometimes I have to be careful when I'm working on an application that I don't become a co-inventor . I'm like well , hey , maybe you should try this or do this I'm like uh-oh , now I'm going to list myself as an inventor .
We get into some conflict situations , so I try and stay hands-off as much as possible there and just put in what they tell me .
So you've written the book which helps companies build and then protect their multimillion-dollar IP portfolio , and one of the things that I know you wrestled with is like how do we title this book ? Is it build ? Is it protect ? Is it million-dollar , Is it multimillion , Is it billion-dollar ? So it billion dollar ?
So can you talk a little bit about the process by just naming the book ?
Yeah . So yeah , you're right , we went over and again . We talk about this a lot at the Mastermind Group , I think probably in July when I had a hot seat in July , we really kind of drilled down on naming of the book .
I think I initially was going to call it how to build a billion dollar IP portfolio , and the more we talked about it and discussed it , the consensus was that that's for my niche client , for my target client , that's maybe something that's unattainable , that's too big for them .
That might kind of intimidate them or cause them to say , oh no , that's not really the book for me . At the same time , a million-dollar was I'm like that's too small . It reminds me of that Austin Powers movie $1 million . Everybody laughed at him because a million dollars isn't that much in today's money . So a million-dollar wasn't big enough .
So we kind of settled on multi-million . We looked at $10 , 100 million . It's like just multi-million , I think , covers a broader spectrum . So that's where we went with on there . As far as building or protecting , again , protecting is part of building , but I really wanted to focus on bringing in people that were wanting to grow and build their portfolios .
And again , you build it by protecting it .
So I thought build was a better word the risk of taking your idea or invention to somebody who might actually be able to fulfill on it , that they , rather than work with you , just pluck the idea and go take it somewhere else .
And so , for somebody who's maybe advising as a general counsel but doesn't have a patent background startups or technology companies or something like that at what stage of ideation do they need to involve somebody like you ?
I generally say the earlier the better . One common mistake I see a lot of inventors make on the patent side is they're out there telling people about their invention , talking to their invention , trying to get investors , trying to get money to move forward , not realizing that that could compromise their ability to patent it .
One good example I can give is I've been a judge in a lot of these pitch competitions where people will and they're trying to get money to help fund their project and there might be prize money , there might be angel investors that are attending these things .
But I can't tell you how many times I've been judging these pitch competitions and somebody's talking about their idea , pitching their idea , and I ask them about patents have you filed a patent application on that ? No , no , but we're going to do that eventually . Or down the road , a couple problems with that ?
No , no , but we're going to do that , you know , eventually or down the road . And you know a couple problems with that One if they've been pitching this for more than a year . You know US law is pretty clear on that that if you have a public disclosure of your invention , you've got one year to file a patent application or that's public domain . You can't .
Oh wow , the law may be pretty clear , but that's the first time I've ever heard that .
Yeah , so . So so I've you know , I've had , I've seen people that I know , have you know they're out there pitching it and have been doing that for more than a year and they , they tell me no , no it and file a patent application and beat you to the punch too .
So really being out there publicly talking about it before you file an application really puts you at a high degree of risk of not being able to protect it .
What does talking about it publicly mean ? Like in an arena or like at cocktail hour ? What is ?
public . I guess it could mean a couple different things . And again , a lot of times it means what can somebody prove in litigation down the road ? And honestly , that's going to be one of the first things that somebody's going to look at if you get into patent litigation is they're going to try and invalidate your patent .
And one of the things they're going to look at would be you know , they're going to scour the internet for you know anything they can find where you might have talked about it publicly more than a year before you filed that application . You know what does it again , what does it mean ? It means what can they prove ? Yeah , and a pitch competition .
I mean that's clearly public , me sitting around having coffee with you or somebody else talking about it , maybe without a nondisclosure agreement , but again , hard to find , hard to prove and that's kind of more questionable .
But I think clearly anything where you're out there you know at an event seeking investors or money or entering a competition , that you know those are clearly public disclosures .
This is a real problem for small time inventors ? Right , Because you have to weigh the cost of pursuing the patent application versus the percentage chance that you can ever monetize this thing .
Yeah , yeah , it's . In fact , I was talking with somebody recently who was part of the startup group and they , you know , now defunct . They didn't move forward , but she was pressing early on . It's like , okay , we need to spend the money to protect the idea .
And you know the other , the other , you know investors in the business were no , we need to finish the app , we need to put our resources here , we need to do this and , like I said , you know this may not be the case every time , but again it didn't go anywhere and then they didn't have any , any assets , you know , at the end of the day , to sell or
to transfer to somebody else . Maybe another way of looking at the IP is you know , even if the company can't get some traction and move forward , if you file the patent application , you get the patent . You at least have an asset there that has some value to it that you could sell to somebody else or do something with .
And again , to me it's important to protect that before you get too far down the road , because if you don't protect it early , you can't protect it at all .
What's the ballpark cost of a patent application ?
Beginning to end , usually I would say $15,000 , $20,000 . Depending on complexity , it may be as little as $10,000 . That on a normal application is over the course of about three years , depending on how we set it up .
Yeah , and so again , if you're a small , you know you're working out of your garage . $15,000 , $20,000 is not some change .
Yeah , no , it's real money . But again , if you've got an idea that's worth building a business around , it's worth protecting .
So if you were looking to build your multimillion dollar IP portfolio , you need a copy of Rick's book . Rick , where can people find that ?
So it's available on Amazon . We should have a shortly . We're working on getting something up on our website too , where you can download a PDF of it from our website , or , you know , reach out to us and we can mail you a copy , and our website is wwwipsolutionslawcom . Working with my web developer to get a page up where people can get the book there soon .
Amazing .
¶ Navigating Intellectual Property Protection
So if you are a small business or if you're counseling small business anywhere in America , think of Rick first . He's got plenty of great information for you before you ever hire him , before you ever spend $15,000 , $20,000 . But when it comes time to protect your assets within your business , Rick is the guy . Rick , where can people find out ?
You just gave us the website , but is there anywhere else you want to direct people ?
That's probably the best place to find out more about us . We've got some information about our fractional counsel offerings and some of the other things we do , and again , the book . But the book's a good resource just to kind of wrap your head around what is IP and what's the process and how to protect it .
We kind of just give an overview of everything and some strategy , just so that people out there that are running small businesses or startups have an idea of what there is to protect . Because , like I said , so many people come to me and they don't have the first idea what IP is or what to protect . And the book's at least a good starting point .
Yeah , I had no idea that if you talk about it , for more than a year , ship is sailed . So not that I'm an inventor , but I can't imagine I'm alone in that . So , rick , thank you for coming on today . I'm looking forward to seeing you in a little .