POSTED BY ipCG Team AT 1:29 P.M. June 7, 2018
On May 9-11, ipCapital Group (ipCG) held its 14th annual Thought Leadership Conference at the Essex Resort & Spa in Vermont. This year’s theme was The RenAIssance of IP. The conference was filled with provocative discussions revolving around hot topics in intellectual property (IP). Following the full day conference, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) IP Tools Workshop was held, during which two highly regarded AI startups presented demos.
Below is a summary of the talks given.
- Rudy Leschke, Senior VP of Research & Development & Food Safety at Ainsworth Pet Nutrition and Terry Adams, former Assistant VP, Head of Technology Intelligence and Scouting at Nestlé, led a discussion on Aligning & linking IP-supported Innovation with Business Growth. Adam Bulakowski, a partner at ipCG, prefaced the discussion by providing an overview of the pet food industry, including how recent M&A activity was impacted by technical and brand IP. Terry discussed how to manage IP portfolios within large organizations–using Nestlé as an example–, how to leverage IP portfolios to create new opportunities with other businesses, how small players should approach large companies when there is a need to license/buy IP, and how the recruitment of IP-savvy technical people is fundamental to the success of an IAM program. The 3 speakers concluded with a fun demonstration of the IAM-AI assistant, Virtual Terry + Adam.
- Next, Patrick Gillespie, IP Engineering Manager at Emerson Electric, discussed IP Strategy for Emerging Technologies. Patrick shared the story of his IP experience and adventures at Emerson through the presentation of case studies. The case studies outlined two different results and challenges faced while developing an IP strategy.
- The keynote speaker, Brian Hinman, former Chief IP Officer of Philips, presented a discussion on Worldwide IP Strategy Across Business Units, during which Brian discussed IP strategy derived from his extensive experience. Brian talked about the importance of centralized management of the IP portfolio and how to communicate it to the C-suite. He also offered fascinating insights into generating revenue from IP and associated R&D.
- Pete Conley, Managing Director of ipCapital Venture Group, collaborated with Simon Robinson and Mark Han, Chief IP Strategy Officer and Chief Legal Officer of Intuitive X, to discuss the Evolving Market for IP Finance: the role of IP in financing and starting new companies. First, Pete discussed how ipCG’s process helped identify for Boston Scientific that camera companies, such as Olympus, were developing endoscopic cameras. This prompted them to utilize the Invention on Demand® process to create 85 filed patents that delivered $1B in value, years before the corresponding product was approved and ready for market. Simon and Mark then explained how Intuitive X, along with ipCG, developed medical device companies by partnering with motivated doctors to identify issues in their field, identify patentable ideas that would benefit the space, then file patents and create prototypes to incorporate into a marketable company.
- Fred Dufresne, Cerinet, and Bill Yuen, Brickell Key Asset Management, co-presented a discussion on the Spectrum of Litigation. Fred and Bill discussed the current trends in IP litigation with respect to the spectrum of types of litigation from “micro-litigation” to fully funded litigation. The discussion also detailed the differences in the analytical process with respect to how a patent or portfolio is be accepted to pursue litigation. Bill and Fred also discussed how current cases (e.g., TC Heartland, Halo, Stryker, etc.) affect the strategy for each type of litigation.
- Denis Taschuk, CEO, and Steven Splinter, CTO, of Radient Technologies, led a discussion on Navigating the Cannabis Processing Landscape: Traversing Regulatory Barriers & Capitalizing on Trade Secrets. First, Denis and Steven educated the group on Radient’s development of a proprietary process for industrial scale extraction of natural products and the company’s pivot towards Canada’s budding cannabis industry by partnering with Aurora Cannabis. They then discussed the crucial role that patent applications filed across each category of a robust ipLandscape®, coupled with an extensive trade secret registry, played in securing investment and underwriting for rapid expansion and an IPO raise.
- As the capstone, John Cronin, Managing Director & Chairman of ipCapital Group led a discussion on The Impact of AI to Innovation, Invention, IP and IP Practices, providing an overview of the current and future state ofAI in intellectual property. John took the group on a journey from the early days of IP and his time at the IBM Patent Factory to the current state of IP and its present and future integration with AI.
- Lastly, ipCG presented a demo of its internally-developed AI-assisted Amazon Alexa skill, Edison, an innovation and brainstorming app that uses AI processing to incorporate keywords and then use those keywords to prompt inventors into expansive, additive, and descriptive thinking. Edison can then store or email ideas that are generated from the brainstorming session.
- Following the full-day conference, an AI tools in IP workshop was held, during which two IP AI companies presented demos. First, Liat Belinson, CEO/CTO of AI Patents (AIP) demonstrated their scientific search engine, which uses machine learning and advanced AI capabilities “to learn about textual relationship that describe the same scientific concepts and applies this learning to compare inventions. Instead of comparing documents on the basis of word similarity, AIP’s algorithm compares documents based on their idea similarity.” AIP has been utilized on two separate contracting actions by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
- Next, Matthew Osman, CEO and co-founder of Legit Patents, demonstrated their software, “focused on augmenting the invention disclosure and idea capture process using Natural Language Processing.” Legit uses responsive and user-friendly software that simulates the initial interview process between patent attorney and inventor,” dramatically increasing “the number of quality disclosures” and saving attorney hours.
ipCG holds the invitation-only Thought Leadership Conference annually. If you are interested in further information about the discussions held at this past conference or attending future conferences, please contact us at 802-859-7800 or info@ipcg.com, or visit our conference page for more info.