Clause 8

Amit Soussana is an IP attorney at one of Israel’s leading IP firms, Luzzato and Luzzatto.  She is also one of more than 240 people – including babies, children, women, the elderly, and the disabled - who were brutally taken hostage by terrorists from Gaza on October 7 th .  More than 40 days later, almost all of them are still being held hostage.   Kfir Luzzatto, the senior partner of Amit’s law...

Clause 8 is back for a new season!  To start the season, Eli – for the first time on Clause 8 - shares his own thoughts at length about the hottest debates in the patent world.   On this episode, Eli discusses: The horrific October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and more than 240 Israelis still being held captured by the terrorists His “first IP interview” with then Israel Patent Office Director As...

When Judge Pauline Newman helped create the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982 to have exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases, no one could’ve guessed the drama that would follow almost 40 years after she joined the court herself. In April,  Gene Quinn broke the news  on IPWatchdog about a complaint filed by the Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit against Newman for being unabl...

Will Twitter's meager patent portfolio doom Elon Musk’s hopes of “strictly enforcing” Twitter’s IP rights?  Eli is joined by return guest Gaston Kroub on this special episode to discuss how an unprecedented IP dispute between two of the world’s richest men might play out.   In response to Meta successfully launching Threads, Musk’s go to lawyer Alex Spiro sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg expressin...

USPTO Director Kathi Vidal’s decision to issue the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) is the latest major controversy surrounding the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  The American Invents Act (AIA) created the PTAB to supposedly provide a cheaper, faster alternative to district court patent litigation.  However, the PTAB quickly gained a reputation for being a patent “death squad”...

Eli is joined by colleague Shawn Lillemo, Head of Software Development at their firm Harrity, to talk about the firm’s tech journey.  Shawn and Eli talk about why and how the firm started its own software development team to create tools to improve how it handles its patent preparation and prosecution work, Shawn’s superstar team in Ukraine, the future role of AI, and much more: The slow embrace o...

Thank you for listening to the Clause 8 podcast. We hope you’ve enjoyed the episodes so far this season. We’re on a short break but we’ll be back next week with more episodes. Please consider subscribing and taking a few moments to share this podcast with others and giving us a rating in your favorite podcast app. It helps this podcast reach new audiences.  Eli is always welcome to hear any though...

Joff Wild on Founding IAM for Chief IP Officers & EU Commission’s anti-SEP Crusade “It became obvious to me that IP was a lot more than laws and court decisions and regulations.  IP was becoming a fundamental business asset, one that people could use to generate profits, build partnerships, go out into the markets, and raise cash.  But no one was writing about that there was no coverage of that. S...

Eli is joined by the legend of the patent bar, the virtuoso of Federal Circuit decisions – Tom Irving. They discuss the rise of the pharmaceutical patent practice, the creation and current state of the Federal Circuit, why and how Tom mentored 1000s of patent attorneys, best practices for patent prosecution, and much more! Chief Judge Moore’s efforts to oust Judge Newman How Tom ended up practicin...

Tim Pohlmann is the founder and CEO of IPlytics, which provides software analytics tools for standard essential patents (SEPs).  Tim is also one of the world’s leading economists that focuses on the subject of SEPs, and was recently commissioned by the EU Commission to provide empirical studies for their work regarding SEPs. Tim’s podcast, The SEP Couch, features discussions with a very diverse gr...

David Jones is the Executive Director of the High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), which advocates on patent policy issues on behalf of some of the largest tech companies in the world.  When Dave became the head of HTIA in 2019, it seemed that DC was finally turning against the “patent troll” narrative driving patent policy in Congress and the executive branch.  However, that did not last long: eff...

Former Patent Commissioner Robert Stoll joins the Clause 8 podcast to talk about working his way up from being an examiner to being the commissioner over his 30+ year-long career at the USPTO.  As commissioner, Bob helped former USTPO Director David Kappos implement the American Invents Act (AIA) and transform how the USPTO’s patent examiners operate.  Before that, he served as USPTO’s head of the...

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 le...

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 observ...

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) fo...

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 busine...

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...

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...

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...

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 fi...

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...

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 p...

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 a...

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 ad...

“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 th...