IPWatchdog Unleashed

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we speak with F. Scott Kieff, who is a former Commissioner on the International Trade Commission, and Joshua Hartman, head of Merchant & Gould’s ITC practice group. Our conversation, which took place on June 4, focused on the landmark ruling by the Federal Circuit in Lashify, Inc. v. International Trade Commission. Our conversation is wide ranging and touches on the politics and history of the ...

Ways to make a better patent system is a common theme at IPWatchdog, and we are going to get more seriously involved in that discussion over the next year as we try to bring thought leaders together for high-level, substantive conversations. And this conversation is the opening salvo in that effort. 

 Our panel really needs no introduction. All the members joining us this week are members of the IPWatchdog Hall of Fame. We start wit...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a conversation that I've wanted to have for some time. The topic this week is quantum computers. It is quite a niche topic and finding people who actually know what they're talking about is not particularly easy, but this is an enormously important topic that we should all know something about because for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to achieve all its full potential we are going ...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed I do not have a guest. Instead I want to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the complex intersection between patent quality, patent examination and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). My interest in speaking today about these issues is triggered by the confirmation hearing last week for John Squires, who is President Trump’s nominee to be the next Under Secretary of Commerce for In...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed I speak with Allison Gaul who serves as legal counsel for Boston Consulting Group. She is responsible for evaluating digital products with an eye towards intellectual property strategy, value creation, and legal risk. She is also a recovering, or at least former patent attorney. She does still advise BCG on patent issues, but she is not drafting and prosecuting patent applications at this point. We...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we explore whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has progressed to the point where it has already achieved consciousness. In a nutshell, the answer is our panel of technologists do not believe AI is very close to achieving consciousness, but that it is indeed possible for AI to reach the point of consciousness, and to even reach the point of self-reflection, which would pose an existentia...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a special conversation that was recorded at the end of our AI 2025 program in front of a live studio audience.  Joining me were Stephanie Curcio, Clint Mehall, and John Rogitz, who along with Wen Xie, make up the new IPWatchdog Advisory Committee. Each of these people have been long-time attendees at our events, they often speak on panels, they often written articles for us, and now they wi...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a conversation with two shareholders from Wolf Greenfield. Ed Rassavage and John Strand were both speakers on our recently concluded AI 2025 program. As the program was concluding, and in front of a live studio audience, we sat down to discuss the current state of the industry from a client’s perspective. 

“It’s a lot of wait-and-see unfortunately,” Strand said. “The companies that have come...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed I speak with my long-time friend Jim Carmichael, who is a former Administrative Patent Judge and the founder of Carmichael IP. Jim was on the Board of Appeals and Interferences at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which was the predecessor to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Today Jim and his firm exclusively represent patent owners in post-grant proceedings, including...

This week on this edition of IPWatchdog Unleashed, we speak with Sonja London. Sonia has been general counsel at TactoTek and before that she spent 14 years working for Nokia, where she oversaw Nokia's consumer electronics licensing, global licensing program for connectivity and video codecs, and was responsible for standardization. Sonja has spent the last year as President of Licensing Executives Society International (LESI)...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleahsed we speak with James Edwards, who is the CEO of ELITE Strategic Services, a property rights advocate, lobbyist and is now also the author of the forthcoming book To Invent Is Divine: Creativity and Ownership, which addresses the disconnect between the attributes of creativity and ownership and human innovation, technological progress, and practical benefits from human creativity and ownership. 

Durin...

This week on IPWatchdog LIVE we present the remarks made during the Award Ceremony at IPWatchdog LIVE 2025 on March 3, 2025. Once again this year we presented two awards at IPWatchdog LIVE; the Paul Michel Award and the Pauline Newman Award. Both awards were created with the blessing of the Judges, who play an integral role in determining who to recognize each year. 

We were pleased to recognize Robert Taylor as the 2025 recipient o...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed I speak with my friend Jason Harrier, former Chief Patent Counsel at Capital One and current co-founder and General Counsel of artificial intelligence (AI) company IP Copilot. 

One of the things IP Copilot enables is the use of AI to streamline invention harvesting, running in the background as engineers and scientists engage in their daily activities communicating with each other. So, with this in ...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we present another keynote speaker—Lisa Jorgensen. Jorgensen’s speech was given during lunch on Monday, March 3 at IPWatchdog LIVE 2025.

Lisa Jorgensen is Deputy Director General for Patents and Technology at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). And even before assuming the position as Deputy Director General of WIPO in 2021, she was very well known to the U.S. intellectual property ...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed our conversation is with Judge John Holcomb of the United States Federal District Court for the Central District of California, which took place March 4, 2025, at IPWatchdog LIVE.

Judge Holcomb is one of us. He was a patent professional—a patent litigator—before he joined the federal judiciary. He was appointed by President Donald J. Trump during his first term. And he serves in the Central District...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I'm going to talk about an issue of enormous importance. The U.S. patent system feels to me an awful lot like the Titanic right now, and it feels like we're fast approaching an iceberg with disaster imminent.

The Trump Administration is making major changes to reduce the size of government to address the $37 trillion federal debt, including withdrawing employment offers to patent examiner...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we take a dive into the world of university technology transfer with Laura Peter, who is the Executive Director of the University of North Carolina Charlotte Office of Research Commercialization and Partnerships and is a former Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during President Trump’s first term...

 This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we take a look at the importance of data transparency and standards for artificial intelligence (AI) and standard essential patents (SEPs). Our guest is Tim Pohlmann, who is the Managing Director for the Americas at LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. And before he joined LexisNexis, Tim was the founder and CEO of IPLytics. Tim has worked at the intersection of data and standard essential ...

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we enter the world of innovation politics with a discussion about what to expect for the patent world during President Trump's second term, what to specifically expect from the Patent Office, what to expect in Congress relating to the patent reform bills that we can expect to be reintroduced, which are namely PREVAIL, which relates to reforming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the Pat...