April 18, 2025 • 23 mins
In this first episode of IP Innovators, veteran patent attorney Paul Hunter, Partner and Electronics Practice Co-Chair at Foley & Lardner, shares his journey from filing patents using fax machines to leading an AI-accelerated practice. A candid look at how real careers adapt—and thrive—as technology transforms the future of IP law.
👨💼 About the Guest:
Paul Hunter is a leading IP attorney with deep expertise in electronics, software, AI/ML, semiconductors, and more. As chair of Foley’s Electronics Practice and managing partner of the San Diego office, he helps companies protect cutting-edge tech through patents and trade secrets.
This podcast is sponsored by DeepIP – your trusted AI patent assistant. For more information, visit: deepip.ai
🛎️ Subscribe to hear more real stories, evolving practice, and the future of IP law.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve Brachmann (00:00):
Hello, my name is Steve Brachman and welcome to
IP Innovators sponsored by DeepIP, your trusted AI patent
assistant.
This podcast series willfeature conversations with
patent attorneys about theircareers and how technological
advances have impacted theirdaily practice.
Joining me today is Paul Hunter, partner at Foley Lardner.
(00:22):
Hello, Paul, Thanks for joiningus today.
Paul Hunter (00:25):
Thank you, Steve.
Thanks for inviting me.
Steve Brachmann (00:27):
Absolutely.
If you can give me a sense, youhave been a patent attorney for
how long?
Paul Hunter (00:34):
So over 27 years.
Steve Brachmann (00:36):
And where did you start your career, if you
can kind of give a retrospectiveof how you got into patent law?
Paul Hunter (00:44):
So I have an undergraduate degree in
electrical and computerengineering from BYU.
I then went to law school atthe University of Michigan.
After graduating from MichiganI started as an associate at
Foley in our Milwaukee office.
I worked at Foley as anassociate for about eight years,
became a partner.
(01:04):
I then transferred to Foley'sSan Diego office and I've been
here in San Diego continuing atFoley as a partner.
I'm the co-chair of ourelectronics practice.
I'm also the managing partnerfor the office here in San Diego
.
Steve Brachmann (01:21):
If we can go back to the beginning of your
career and just talk about howdifferent daily practice was
back when you were an earlycareer patent attorney, given
where the state of technologywas at the time, so things like
filing patent applications andwhat that looked like then
compared to now.
Paul Hunter (01:40):
Yeah, absolutely so .
There have been changes notonly in the technologies that
get covered by the patentapplications, but the
technologies that we use toprepare those patent
applications.
When I first started, we wereusing a DOS-based word
processing program, wordperfect5.1.
We had to learn all sorts ofkeystrokes using F commands and
(02:02):
we didn't even have a mouse, andit was a very manual process.
We used secretaries prettyextensively.
I had a dictaphone that I woulddictate into, I would do a lot
of written editing, and so theentire process was a lot more
manual than it is today.
I also remember that back inthose days, instead of
(02:23):
electronically filing patentapplications, we had to have
someone physically go to thepost office and get a date stamp
of when the patent applicationwas filed.
And sometimes, if we were underthe gun with not a lot of time
left, we would have to go to apost office that was open 24
hours and make sure we got astamp before midnight to make
(02:46):
sure we got the correct date.
Steve Brachmann (02:48):
Being a recent law school grad myself, I'm very
familiar with the race to amidnight filing date, but the
idea of trying to find a 24-hourpost office boggles the
imagination right now.
Can you give a sense of PaulHunter in the mid-90s?
Walks into his office and has afull day of tasks in front of
(03:09):
him as a patent attorney.
What is the bulk of your timespent?
Paul Hunter (03:14):
Thinking back to that time period, it was
interesting.
We were all wearing suits andties and we would walk into our
office and we would have a lotof paper.
We would have files everywhereand you know, we would have what
we would call a trifold foreach patent application where
you would open this folder andon one side of the trifold you'd
have all the communicationsfrom the client.
(03:37):
Another side you would havecommunications from the patent
office and then a third side youwould have the documents that
you would prepare.
And you know it was very paperintensive.
Even though we had computers,we did not have the luxury of
being able to send emails withattachments, so we received a
(03:57):
lot of faxes from clients and wealso did a lot of in-person
meetings, where now I veryrarely sit in the same room as
an inventor, we have Zoom callsand back in the day we spent a
lot of time with in-personmeetings.
We'd fly around the country andsit down with inventors and the
(04:19):
whole process was a lot moremanual than it is today.
Steve Brachmann (04:23):
For patent prosecution, then were a lot of
the day-to-day daily tasksdifferent, and what did they
kind of focus on for prosecutionas opposed to, I guess,
drafting yeah.
Paul Hunter (04:32):
So patent prosecution was also very much
more let's call it a manualprocess with searching, and
there were often a lot ofin-person interviews at the
patent office.
I remember back in the day thatthere were a lot of law firms
that were located right next tothe patent office because people
were going to the patent officeregularly.
(04:54):
At that time patent examinerslived in the DC area.
There was not this hoteling orremote work that we have now.
Back then there was a lot moreface-to-face interaction.
There was a lot more use ofpaper and we would have
literally rooms full of fileswith searches and we would have
(05:16):
to go through on paper and lookfor prior art.
We didn't have the Googlesearch tools or the electronic
programs that we have now, so itwas all very, very manual.
Steve Brachmann (05:28):
Very manual and a lot of travel, which sounds
nice, but I'm going to assumethat it was more travel than
maybe feels necessary now.
Paul Hunter (05:38):
You know absolutely .
You think back to those timesand you're like how in the world
did I go to all these places,visit all these clients?
And I prefer what we have now,where it's much easier to reach
out to clients.
It's certainly a lot moreefficient than it was then,
although at the same time it waspretty enjoyable to visit
clients and schedule dinners andhave more personal
(05:59):
relationships with them.
Steve Brachmann (06:01):
We can still do that now, I guess, just to a
more relaxing degree.
So if you could take me throughyour career, paul, from early
career associate to currently co-chair of the electronics
practice over at Foley andLardner, yeah, absolutely so.
Paul Hunter (06:21):
It's very interesting that my practice
evolved along with thedevelopment of the technology
that I was working to protect.
So one of my clients early on inI think it was 1999, was a
company called quackcom and thefascinating technology that they
had developed was a voicerecognition technology that
(06:44):
would allow you to use a regulartelephone to call them and then
you would ask questions that itwould then use the internet to
get answers for.
So, for example, you would calland say you know, tell me what
the weather is going to be likein Denver, colorado, tomorrow,
and it would go to the internet,it would find that and then it
would tell you.
(07:04):
So I guess it was the earlydays of the smart speaker or
Siri or something like that.
You know, this concept of usingthe internet to gather
information was very new at thetime, but we started integrating
it into our practice as soon aswe could to find prior art, to
find descriptions of technology,to really speed up the process
(07:27):
of preparing the patentapplication and doing the
prosecution as well.
The greater availability ofinformation really helped us to
get better prior art, to getbetter descriptions and to get
better patent applicationsoverall.
Steve Brachmann (07:42):
To what degree do you think early adoption of
technologies at this time whenyou're working on clients like
Quackcom?
To what degree was thatadoption critical in your
ability to advance your practice?
Paul Hunter (07:56):
It was very critical.
The more I could learn aboutdeveloping technologies and the
more I could include those in mydaily practice.
It made my practice much moreefficient.
It made my clients happier withhow quickly things could be.
You know it used to be thatclients didn't expect to hear
back from their lawyer for days,whereas now, you know, most of
(08:20):
my clients expect a responsewithin an hour.
Steve Brachmann (08:24):
Minutes.
Yes, so let's focus on thedot-com era and quackcom.
Are there any other experiencesfrom this time that we can
delve into?
I think we had spoken about youhad some experience handling
patent applications in theinvestment banking sector.
Paul Hunter (08:44):
Yeah.
So there were a number of banksand investment companies that
wanted to protect the tradingtechniques and the algorithms
that they were using for doingtrades, and it was a window into
an area that I really didn'thave that much experience in
when I was going to schoollearning about electronics and
software, but I learned veryquickly that this world of
(09:07):
financial investments is heavilymath-centric, uses a lot of
very challenging algorithms.
Now there's a lot of innovationthat goes into it.
This was when people were firststarting to think about
high-frequency trading and theconcept that if we have our
trading machines right next tothe stock market, we can make
(09:29):
trades faster than other peopleand we can buy and sell when the
stock is going up by pennies ornickels.
A lot of these folks were very,very smart people that were
thinking about ways to figureout how to buy and sell stocks
in ways that would generate lotsof money.
Steve Brachmann (09:48):
Can you give a timeframe for the years that you
were working in this sector?
Paul Hunter (09:52):
Yeah, so it was probably the early 2000s.
This was when computers weregetting used more and more.
Computers were faster, therewere computer networks, plus a
lot of the IPOs that were goingon would result in people making
lots of money, and so there wasa lot of the IPOs that were
going on would result in peoplemaking lots of money, and so
there was a lot of effort intobeing able to figure out how to
trade faster, trade smarter.
(10:13):
You know, this boom alsoresulted in a lot of people
wanting to file patents on thetechnologies that were being
developed.
At the time, quackcom had acompetitor called Tell Me
Networks, and there wereprobably another dozen other
companies at the same time thatwere trying to develop the same
kind of technology, and it wasvery important to them and to
(10:37):
their investors that they haveprotection in the form of
patents to keep others fromtaking the technology.
Steve Brachmann (10:44):
So early 2000s and the IP journalist in me goes
, those are the days right afterState Street, right.
Paul Hunter (10:51):
So, State Street was certainly the big case back
in the day.
It involved a company that wastrading using a hub and spokes
method and they were trying toget a patent on that and
certainly there was a lot offear about the types of patents
that people were trying to get.
I remember seeing patents on youknow method of making a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich andall sorts of the reverse auction
(11:15):
for Pricelinecom.
And you know I had someinvolvement with a company back
in the day called Walker Digital.
They were just coming up withideas that they would start
companies with, includingPricelinecom, which was one of
their ideas.
They had another idea that theypatented where you would go to
a fast food restaurant and thecomputer running the register
(11:40):
would know they could offer youa drink or some other product
and still make money but offerit at a lower amount to round up
to the next dollar.
So if your total was, you know,$7 and 43 cents, the computer
would say, hey, we can stillmake money by rounding this up
to $8 and offer the person a youknow a small fry or a or a soda
(12:03):
or something like that.
And so that that was one of theyou know people were just
sitting around the boardroomtable coming up with ideas and
patenting them and startingcompanies.
It was a pretty amazing time.
Steve Brachmann (12:16):
And we're still not to delve too deeply into
patent law chronology here, butwe're currently at a state in
time where we have a lot ofSection 101 issues, threshold
issues with the patentability ofthese technologies.
In your career, have you seenany clarity coming to this area?
Has it gotten murkier in yourgeneral opinion?
Paul Hunter (12:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
For a while it seemed like itwas a giant pendulum where it
would swing from anything andeverything is patentable.
Anything under the sun ispatentable.
Oh my gosh, we cannot havepeople patenting stock trading
techniques.
We can't have people patentingpeanut butter and jelly
sandwiches.
You know we've got to preventall of this and then it would
(13:02):
kind of swing back and it reallydepends on what court you get.
If you go to the NorthernDistrict of California, you're
going to have a completelydifferent view on 101 than if
you go and you're filing in theEastern District of Texas.
There is a lot of uncertaintywith 101.
And there have been efforts totry to clarify that.
The courts have tried toclarify it and patent office has
(13:24):
, but it's still just such amoving target.
The patent office seems to comeup with new rules constantly
and it is a challenge.
You know, to the point whereinventions that are clearly
related to technology you knowencoding for a modem or
something like that you seeone-on-one rejections on things
(13:44):
that in the past you thoughtwell, that was the world of
business methods and otherthings like that.
But now it's being used for allsorts of different patent
applications.
Steve Brachmann (13:54):
Much of my ink has been spilled covering
Section 101 developments overthe past decade really.
So on the flip side, yes, wehave patent applications for
technological advances whichhave been rejected.
On the flip side, let's talkabout the peanut butter
applications.
Is there a particularlyfavorite oddball patent
application that you've seenthat you go?
(14:15):
That's not patentable but I'msure happy they tried.
Paul Hunter (14:21):
Well, I did see a patent application on.
They called it crossutilization of employees.
And so the idea was, if you hada valet that is parking cars at
a hotel, you could crossutilize that valet to do baggage
delivery.
And so there is a patent outthere on cross utilization of
(14:47):
employees, where the employeenot only is a valet, but the
employee is also a baggagedelivery person.
Steve Brachmann (14:55):
Wow, take that scan to email patent.
All right, let's take usthrough the mid-thousands, early
2010s.
When did it become clear to youthat artificial intelligence
was going to have a very deepimpact on patent practice?
Paul Hunter (15:11):
Well, I mean, I think a lot of people can point
to the OpenAI's introduction ofChatGPT as being really just a
shocking development intechnology.
I remember when I first startedusing it, the ability to,
instead of having to, go out tothe internet and do a bunch of
searching and sifting throughwebsites, the ability to have a
(15:33):
computer do that for me was justfascinating.
I mean, I could ask it tosummarize the state of the art
in a particular technology andit would go and find the right
websites and it would give me apretty good description of what
you know the current state ofart was.
And I saw that, as there are somany applications for
(15:53):
generative AI, you know, Iinstantly started thinking of
well, how can I use this tospeed up generating an IDS,
organizing references, coming upwith analysis of 100-page
patents in seconds?
Steve Brachmann (16:09):
So right around the introduction of ChatGPT in
2022?
Yeah, was when you wereadopting Yep.
Paul Hunter (16:15):
Yeah about that time and just have been an
explosion of vendors that areout there with all sorts of
products.
There are companies out therethat claim they can draft a
patent application from aninvention disclosure.
I've tested probably half adozen of those, maybe more, and
some of them are kind of clunky,but they're headed in a
(16:35):
direction where I think, withthe right driver, with an
experienced patent attorneydriving the AI, with a human in
the loop kind of program, youcan use the technology to really
generate high quality,efficient patent applications
and office action responses.
(16:56):
It's not a touring machine,it's not something that's going
to do it all on its own, a blackbox that spits out a final
product.
It's really just another tool,just like the tools that we've
seen over the last 30 years,that will help the attorneys to
find the right prior art,describe the application very
(17:16):
well and come up withhigh-quality patent applications
.
Well, you know, one thing that'sreally interesting to me is,
during the last 30 years, ateach stage whether it was the
dot-com boom or, you know, the101 craze at each stage there
have been people that have beenjust yelling and screaming about
how you know this is going tobe the end of patent law.
(17:39):
It reminds me of back in the1800s, when they wanted to shut
down the patent office becauseeverything that possibly could
be invented was already invented.
And now we have people sayingwell, examiners are going to get
replaced by AI and, for thatmatter, the attorneys, the
inventors, and it's all this.
(18:01):
You know, everything's going tohell in a handbasket, kind of
thing.
Steve Brachmann (18:05):
In looking at different AI tools that have
been developed for patentlawyers much like yourself, is
there a top drawback that youcontinue to bump into that?
Every time you do, you go nice,try, but I'm going to move on.
Paul Hunter (18:19):
Let me list them in order of frustration.
Number one hallucinations.
You know it started out thathallucinations were a huge issue
and they are getting better.
But just yesterday I waslooking at something that an AI
tool proposed and I'm likethat's just stupid.
And not only that, that's notsupported anywhere in the
(18:39):
specification, where in theworld did you get this from?
And so sometimes I feel likeI'm having a conversation with a
junior, like a first yearassociate, when I'm interacting
with ai, saying, yeah, okay,where did you get this, how did
you get it?
And all that kind of thing.
The second thing that is a bigfrustration is you know, whether
(19:00):
it's Anthropic or ChatGPT orany of these tools, how often I
get you've run out of time oryou've run out of space.
You can't give me moreinformation, and I'm sure that a
lot of that's due to someeconomic pressures and all that.
That is a frustration that someof these tools say well, I
can't really look at more thantwo references if I'm analyzing
(19:23):
an office action, response,hallucinations, limitations on
quantity.
And then the third one is Ithink companies, instead of
focusing on the holy grail ofproducing work without a human,
they should focus on giving thehumans ways to work faster and
better.
Again, instead of having ablack box where, hey, we'll take
(19:46):
your invention disclosure andhere's a patent application,
finding ways to give the humanways to become faster at what
they do, to more quickly findthe part of the prior art
reference that teaches something, or to more quickly identify
what part of the claims aremissing from, you know, the
(20:07):
references.
Instead of replacing the human,you know, making the human more
powerful.
Steve Brachmann (20:13):
Augmenting instead of replacing, right.
So then, let's start to wrap uphere, because we're getting
close to time, and I'm wonderingif, paul, we've talked about
the state of technology, earlycareer for you.
Where is that state oftechnology now in your practice?
How have you adopted AI intopatent practice and how has it
(20:35):
transformed what you're doingtoday?
Paul Hunter (20:38):
Yeah.
So I think the transformation,everything's going faster.
Everything's becoming moredemanding.
Most of my clients regularlythink well, you should be able
to do this in just a couple ofdays, whereas in the past it was
.
You know, we're going to take acouple of days to do a search
with an outside vendor and thatoutside vendor sends some report
(21:00):
and then we take a weekreviewing it.
Now we have tools that thesearch is done by the computer,
the review is done by a humanusing a computer to analyze it,
and everything has to get donemuch faster.
But at the same time I thinkthe quality has gone up
tremendously.
I think in the past where thosemanual searches, they would
(21:23):
often just miss things, and nowsome of the high quality AI
search tools, if there'spriority to find, they're going
to find it.
Steve Brachmann (21:31):
Can you quantify and I'm wondering if
you can do this in, say, anumber of patent applications
per month?
Can you quantify how much moreproductive you're able to be
because of your use of AI?
Paul Hunter (21:45):
Yeah, so I think in the 90s, I think, a experienced
patent attorney associate wouldprobably spend 40 to 50 hours
preparing a patent application,and I think that that is now 20
hours.
So I think it's certainly atleast 50% more efficient.
Steve Brachmann (22:05):
To kind of wrap up here and put a pin in things
.
What would Paul Hunter,co-chair of Foley's Electronics
Practice Group, tell Paul Hunter, the early career associate at
Foley Lardner in the mid-1990s?
What would he tell him backthen?
Paul Hunter (22:22):
Yeah, so I think, take the time to find the tools
that make your job moreefficient.
I'd probably also tell him toinvest in some companies.
Steve Brachmann (22:35):
Probably name a few, yeah.
Paul Hunter (22:37):
Yeah, but no, I think it's doing more than just
sitting down at your desk anddoing things the way they've
always been done.
You need to think of ways ofdoing things a little
differently.
You know, I have associates nowthat they're still doing things
the way that things were donefive years ago, and I encourage
(22:58):
them test things out, try to usetechnology and you know,
imagine having the internetthere and not using it.
Well, they're going to use theinternet Well.
So now think about you know,using these AI tools and making
them part of your daily practice.
Steve Brachmann (23:17):
Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Thanks, Paul, for taking thetime to speak with me.
Paul Hunter (23:22):
You're welcome, Steve.
Thank you very much.
This is a very important topic.
I'm very passionate about itand I think that there are lots
of good things about the futureof the practice of patent law.
Steve Brachmann (23:32):
Well, until next time.
Thank you for joining IPInnovators.
Happy patenting.
Hello, my name is Steve Brachman and welcome to
IP Innovators sponsored by DeepIP, your trusted AI patent
assistant.
This podcast series willfeature conversations with
patent attorneys about theircareers and how technological
advances have impacted theirdaily practice.
Joining me today is Paul Hunter, partner at Foley Lardner.
(00:22):
Hello, Paul, Thanks for joiningus today.
Paul Hunter (00:25):
Thank you, Steve.
Thanks for inviting me.
Steve Brachmann (00:27):
Absolutely.
If you can give me a sense, youhave been a patent attorney for
how long?
Paul Hunter (00:34):
So over 27 years.
Steve Brachmann (00:36):
And where did you start your career, if you
can kind of give a retrospectiveof how you got into patent law?
Paul Hunter (00:44):
So I have an undergraduate degree in
electrical and computerengineering from BYU.
I then went to law school atthe University of Michigan.
After graduating from MichiganI started as an associate at
Foley in our Milwaukee office.
I worked at Foley as anassociate for about eight years,
became a partner.
(01:04):
I then transferred to Foley'sSan Diego office and I've been
here in San Diego continuing atFoley as a partner.
I'm the co-chair of ourelectronics practice.
I'm also the managing partnerfor the office here in San Diego
.
Steve Brachmann (01:21):
If we can go back to the beginning of your
career and just talk about howdifferent daily practice was
back when you were an earlycareer patent attorney, given
where the state of technologywas at the time, so things like
filing patent applications andwhat that looked like then
compared to now.
Paul Hunter (01:40):
Yeah, absolutely so .
There have been changes notonly in the technologies that
get covered by the patentapplications, but the
technologies that we use toprepare those patent
applications.
When I first started, we wereusing a DOS-based word
processing program, wordperfect5.1.
We had to learn all sorts ofkeystrokes using F commands and
(02:02):
we didn't even have a mouse, andit was a very manual process.
We used secretaries prettyextensively.
I had a dictaphone that I woulddictate into, I would do a lot
of written editing, and so theentire process was a lot more
manual than it is today.
I also remember that back inthose days, instead of
(02:23):
electronically filing patentapplications, we had to have
someone physically go to thepost office and get a date stamp
of when the patent applicationwas filed.
And sometimes, if we were underthe gun with not a lot of time
left, we would have to go to apost office that was open 24
hours and make sure we got astamp before midnight to make
(02:46):
sure we got the correct date.
Steve Brachmann (02:48):
Being a recent law school grad myself, I'm very
familiar with the race to amidnight filing date, but the
idea of trying to find a 24-hourpost office boggles the
imagination right now.
Can you give a sense of PaulHunter in the mid-90s?
Walks into his office and has afull day of tasks in front of
(03:09):
him as a patent attorney.
What is the bulk of your timespent?
Paul Hunter (03:14):
Thinking back to that time period, it was
interesting.
We were all wearing suits andties and we would walk into our
office and we would have a lotof paper.
We would have files everywhereand you know, we would have what
we would call a trifold foreach patent application where
you would open this folder andon one side of the trifold you'd
have all the communicationsfrom the client.
(03:37):
Another side you would havecommunications from the patent
office and then a third side youwould have the documents that
you would prepare.
And you know it was very paperintensive.
Even though we had computers,we did not have the luxury of
being able to send emails withattachments, so we received a
(03:57):
lot of faxes from clients and wealso did a lot of in-person
meetings, where now I veryrarely sit in the same room as
an inventor, we have Zoom callsand back in the day we spent a
lot of time with in-personmeetings.
We'd fly around the country andsit down with inventors and the
(04:19):
whole process was a lot moremanual than it is today.
Steve Brachmann (04:23):
For patent prosecution, then were a lot of
the day-to-day daily tasksdifferent, and what did they
kind of focus on for prosecutionas opposed to, I guess,
drafting yeah.
Paul Hunter (04:32):
So patent prosecution was also very much
more let's call it a manualprocess with searching, and
there were often a lot ofin-person interviews at the
patent office.
I remember back in the day thatthere were a lot of law firms
that were located right next tothe patent office because people
were going to the patent officeregularly.
(04:54):
At that time patent examinerslived in the DC area.
There was not this hoteling orremote work that we have now.
Back then there was a lot moreface-to-face interaction.
There was a lot more use ofpaper and we would have
literally rooms full of fileswith searches and we would have
(05:16):
to go through on paper and lookfor prior art.
We didn't have the Googlesearch tools or the electronic
programs that we have now, so itwas all very, very manual.
Steve Brachmann (05:28):
Very manual and a lot of travel, which sounds
nice, but I'm going to assumethat it was more travel than
maybe feels necessary now.
Paul Hunter (05:38):
You know absolutely .
You think back to those timesand you're like how in the world
did I go to all these places,visit all these clients?
And I prefer what we have now,where it's much easier to reach
out to clients.
It's certainly a lot moreefficient than it was then,
although at the same time it waspretty enjoyable to visit
clients and schedule dinners andhave more personal
(05:59):
relationships with them.
Steve Brachmann (06:01):
We can still do that now, I guess, just to a
more relaxing degree.
So if you could take me throughyour career, paul, from early
career associate to currently co-chair of the electronics
practice over at Foley andLardner, yeah, absolutely so.
Paul Hunter (06:21):
It's very interesting that my practice
evolved along with thedevelopment of the technology
that I was working to protect.
So one of my clients early on inI think it was 1999, was a
company called quackcom and thefascinating technology that they
had developed was a voicerecognition technology that
(06:44):
would allow you to use a regulartelephone to call them and then
you would ask questions that itwould then use the internet to
get answers for.
So, for example, you would calland say you know, tell me what
the weather is going to be likein Denver, colorado, tomorrow,
and it would go to the internet,it would find that and then it
would tell you.
(07:04):
So I guess it was the earlydays of the smart speaker or
Siri or something like that.
You know, this concept of usingthe internet to gather
information was very new at thetime, but we started integrating
it into our practice as soon aswe could to find prior art, to
find descriptions of technology,to really speed up the process
(07:27):
of preparing the patentapplication and doing the
prosecution as well.
The greater availability ofinformation really helped us to
get better prior art, to getbetter descriptions and to get
better patent applicationsoverall.
Steve Brachmann (07:42):
To what degree do you think early adoption of
technologies at this time whenyou're working on clients like
Quackcom?
To what degree was thatadoption critical in your
ability to advance your practice?
Paul Hunter (07:56):
It was very critical.
The more I could learn aboutdeveloping technologies and the
more I could include those in mydaily practice.
It made my practice much moreefficient.
It made my clients happier withhow quickly things could be.
You know it used to be thatclients didn't expect to hear
back from their lawyer for days,whereas now, you know, most of
(08:20):
my clients expect a responsewithin an hour.
Steve Brachmann (08:24):
Minutes.
Yes, so let's focus on thedot-com era and quackcom.
Are there any other experiencesfrom this time that we can
delve into?
I think we had spoken about youhad some experience handling
patent applications in theinvestment banking sector.
Paul Hunter (08:44):
Yeah.
So there were a number of banksand investment companies that
wanted to protect the tradingtechniques and the algorithms
that they were using for doingtrades, and it was a window into
an area that I really didn'thave that much experience in
when I was going to schoollearning about electronics and
software, but I learned veryquickly that this world of
(09:07):
financial investments is heavilymath-centric, uses a lot of
very challenging algorithms.
Now there's a lot of innovationthat goes into it.
This was when people were firststarting to think about
high-frequency trading and theconcept that if we have our
trading machines right next tothe stock market, we can make
(09:29):
trades faster than other peopleand we can buy and sell when the
stock is going up by pennies ornickels.
A lot of these folks were very,very smart people that were
thinking about ways to figureout how to buy and sell stocks
in ways that would generate lotsof money.
Steve Brachmann (09:48):
Can you give a timeframe for the years that you
were working in this sector?
Paul Hunter (09:52):
Yeah, so it was probably the early 2000s.
This was when computers weregetting used more and more.
Computers were faster, therewere computer networks, plus a
lot of the IPOs that were goingon would result in people making
lots of money, and so there wasa lot of the IPOs that were
going on would result in peoplemaking lots of money, and so
there was a lot of effort intobeing able to figure out how to
trade faster, trade smarter.
(10:13):
You know, this boom alsoresulted in a lot of people
wanting to file patents on thetechnologies that were being
developed.
At the time, quackcom had acompetitor called Tell Me
Networks, and there wereprobably another dozen other
companies at the same time thatwere trying to develop the same
kind of technology, and it wasvery important to them and to
(10:37):
their investors that they haveprotection in the form of
patents to keep others fromtaking the technology.
Steve Brachmann (10:44):
So early 2000s and the IP journalist in me goes
, those are the days right afterState Street, right.
Paul Hunter (10:51):
So, State Street was certainly the big case back
in the day.
It involved a company that wastrading using a hub and spokes
method and they were trying toget a patent on that and
certainly there was a lot offear about the types of patents
that people were trying to get.
I remember seeing patents on youknow method of making a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich andall sorts of the reverse auction
(11:15):
for Pricelinecom.
And you know I had someinvolvement with a company back
in the day called Walker Digital.
They were just coming up withideas that they would start
companies with, includingPricelinecom, which was one of
their ideas.
They had another idea that theypatented where you would go to
a fast food restaurant and thecomputer running the register
(11:40):
would know they could offer youa drink or some other product
and still make money but offerit at a lower amount to round up
to the next dollar.
So if your total was, you know,$7 and 43 cents, the computer
would say, hey, we can stillmake money by rounding this up
to $8 and offer the person a youknow a small fry or a or a soda
(12:03):
or something like that.
And so that that was one of theyou know people were just
sitting around the boardroomtable coming up with ideas and
patenting them and startingcompanies.
It was a pretty amazing time.
Steve Brachmann (12:16):
And we're still not to delve too deeply into
patent law chronology here, butwe're currently at a state in
time where we have a lot ofSection 101 issues, threshold
issues with the patentability ofthese technologies.
In your career, have you seenany clarity coming to this area?
Has it gotten murkier in yourgeneral opinion?
Paul Hunter (12:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
For a while it seemed like itwas a giant pendulum where it
would swing from anything andeverything is patentable.
Anything under the sun ispatentable.
Oh my gosh, we cannot havepeople patenting stock trading
techniques.
We can't have people patentingpeanut butter and jelly
sandwiches.
You know we've got to preventall of this and then it would
(13:02):
kind of swing back and it reallydepends on what court you get.
If you go to the NorthernDistrict of California, you're
going to have a completelydifferent view on 101 than if
you go and you're filing in theEastern District of Texas.
There is a lot of uncertaintywith 101.
And there have been efforts totry to clarify that.
The courts have tried toclarify it and patent office has
(13:24):
, but it's still just such amoving target.
The patent office seems to comeup with new rules constantly
and it is a challenge.
You know, to the point whereinventions that are clearly
related to technology you knowencoding for a modem or
something like that you seeone-on-one rejections on things
(13:44):
that in the past you thoughtwell, that was the world of
business methods and otherthings like that.
But now it's being used for allsorts of different patent
applications.
Steve Brachmann (13:54):
Much of my ink has been spilled covering
Section 101 developments overthe past decade really.
So on the flip side, yes, wehave patent applications for
technological advances whichhave been rejected.
On the flip side, let's talkabout the peanut butter
applications.
Is there a particularlyfavorite oddball patent
application that you've seenthat you go?
(14:15):
That's not patentable but I'msure happy they tried.
Paul Hunter (14:21):
Well, I did see a patent application on.
They called it crossutilization of employees.
And so the idea was, if you hada valet that is parking cars at
a hotel, you could crossutilize that valet to do baggage
delivery.
And so there is a patent outthere on cross utilization of
(14:47):
employees, where the employeenot only is a valet, but the
employee is also a baggagedelivery person.
Steve Brachmann (14:55):
Wow, take that scan to email patent.
All right, let's take usthrough the mid-thousands, early
2010s.
When did it become clear to youthat artificial intelligence
was going to have a very deepimpact on patent practice?
Paul Hunter (15:11):
Well, I mean, I think a lot of people can point
to the OpenAI's introduction ofChatGPT as being really just a
shocking development intechnology.
I remember when I first startedusing it, the ability to,
instead of having to, go out tothe internet and do a bunch of
searching and sifting throughwebsites, the ability to have a
(15:33):
computer do that for me was justfascinating.
I mean, I could ask it tosummarize the state of the art
in a particular technology andit would go and find the right
websites and it would give me apretty good description of what
you know the current state ofart was.
And I saw that, as there are somany applications for
(15:53):
generative AI, you know, Iinstantly started thinking of
well, how can I use this tospeed up generating an IDS,
organizing references, coming upwith analysis of 100-page
patents in seconds?
Steve Brachmann (16:09):
So right around the introduction of ChatGPT in
2022?
Yeah, was when you wereadopting Yep.
Paul Hunter (16:15):
Yeah about that time and just have been an
explosion of vendors that areout there with all sorts of
products.
There are companies out therethat claim they can draft a
patent application from aninvention disclosure.
I've tested probably half adozen of those, maybe more, and
some of them are kind of clunky,but they're headed in a
(16:35):
direction where I think, withthe right driver, with an
experienced patent attorneydriving the AI, with a human in
the loop kind of program, youcan use the technology to really
generate high quality,efficient patent applications
and office action responses.
(16:56):
It's not a touring machine,it's not something that's going
to do it all on its own, a blackbox that spits out a final
product.
It's really just another tool,just like the tools that we've
seen over the last 30 years,that will help the attorneys to
find the right prior art,describe the application very
(17:16):
well and come up withhigh-quality patent applications
.
Well, you know, one thing that'sreally interesting to me is,
during the last 30 years, ateach stage whether it was the
dot-com boom or, you know, the101 craze at each stage there
have been people that have beenjust yelling and screaming about
how you know this is going tobe the end of patent law.
(17:39):
It reminds me of back in the1800s, when they wanted to shut
down the patent office becauseeverything that possibly could
be invented was already invented.
And now we have people sayingwell, examiners are going to get
replaced by AI and, for thatmatter, the attorneys, the
inventors, and it's all this.
(18:01):
You know, everything's going tohell in a handbasket, kind of
thing.
Steve Brachmann (18:05):
In looking at different AI tools that have
been developed for patentlawyers much like yourself, is
there a top drawback that youcontinue to bump into that?
Every time you do, you go nice,try, but I'm going to move on.
Paul Hunter (18:19):
Let me list them in order of frustration.
Number one hallucinations.
You know it started out thathallucinations were a huge issue
and they are getting better.
But just yesterday I waslooking at something that an AI
tool proposed and I'm likethat's just stupid.
And not only that, that's notsupported anywhere in the
(18:39):
specification, where in theworld did you get this from?
And so sometimes I feel likeI'm having a conversation with a
junior, like a first yearassociate, when I'm interacting
with ai, saying, yeah, okay,where did you get this, how did
you get it?
And all that kind of thing.
The second thing that is a bigfrustration is you know, whether
(19:00):
it's Anthropic or ChatGPT orany of these tools, how often I
get you've run out of time oryou've run out of space.
You can't give me moreinformation, and I'm sure that a
lot of that's due to someeconomic pressures and all that.
That is a frustration that someof these tools say well, I
can't really look at more thantwo references if I'm analyzing
(19:23):
an office action, response,hallucinations, limitations on
quantity.
And then the third one is Ithink companies, instead of
focusing on the holy grail ofproducing work without a human,
they should focus on giving thehumans ways to work faster and
better.
Again, instead of having ablack box where, hey, we'll take
(19:46):
your invention disclosure andhere's a patent application,
finding ways to give the humanways to become faster at what
they do, to more quickly findthe part of the prior art
reference that teaches something, or to more quickly identify
what part of the claims aremissing from, you know, the
(20:07):
references.
Instead of replacing the human,you know, making the human more
powerful.
Steve Brachmann (20:13):
Augmenting instead of replacing, right.
So then, let's start to wrap uphere, because we're getting
close to time, and I'm wonderingif, paul, we've talked about
the state of technology, earlycareer for you.
Where is that state oftechnology now in your practice?
How have you adopted AI intopatent practice and how has it
(20:35):
transformed what you're doingtoday?
Paul Hunter (20:38):
Yeah.
So I think the transformation,everything's going faster.
Everything's becoming moredemanding.
Most of my clients regularlythink well, you should be able
to do this in just a couple ofdays, whereas in the past it was
.
You know, we're going to take acouple of days to do a search
with an outside vendor and thatoutside vendor sends some report
(21:00):
and then we take a weekreviewing it.
Now we have tools that thesearch is done by the computer,
the review is done by a humanusing a computer to analyze it,
and everything has to get donemuch faster.
But at the same time I thinkthe quality has gone up
tremendously.
I think in the past where thosemanual searches, they would
(21:23):
often just miss things, and nowsome of the high quality AI
search tools, if there'spriority to find, they're going
to find it.
Steve Brachmann (21:31):
Can you quantify and I'm wondering if
you can do this in, say, anumber of patent applications
per month?
Can you quantify how much moreproductive you're able to be
because of your use of AI?
Paul Hunter (21:45):
Yeah, so I think in the 90s, I think, a experienced
patent attorney associate wouldprobably spend 40 to 50 hours
preparing a patent application,and I think that that is now 20
hours.
So I think it's certainly atleast 50% more efficient.
Steve Brachmann (22:05):
To kind of wrap up here and put a pin in things
.
What would Paul Hunter,co-chair of Foley's Electronics
Practice Group, tell Paul Hunter, the early career associate at
Foley Lardner in the mid-1990s?
What would he tell him backthen?
Paul Hunter (22:22):
Yeah, so I think, take the time to find the tools
that make your job moreefficient.
I'd probably also tell him toinvest in some companies.
Steve Brachmann (22:35):
Probably name a few, yeah.
Paul Hunter (22:37):
Yeah, but no, I think it's doing more than just
sitting down at your desk anddoing things the way they've
always been done.
You need to think of ways ofdoing things a little
differently.
You know, I have associates nowthat they're still doing things
the way that things were donefive years ago, and I encourage
(22:58):
them test things out, try to usetechnology and you know,
imagine having the internetthere and not using it.
Well, they're going to use theinternet Well.
So now think about you know,using these AI tools and making
them part of your daily practice.
Steve Brachmann (23:17):
Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Thanks, Paul, for taking thetime to speak with me.
Paul Hunter (23:22):
You're welcome, Steve.
Thank you very much.
This is a very important topic.
I'm very passionate about itand I think that there are lots
of good things about the futureof the practice of patent law.
Steve Brachmann (23:32):
Well, until next time.
Thank you for joining IPInnovators.
Happy patenting.
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