<b>1) Tell Your Patent Attorney What You Want Your Patent to Do.</b> IP attorneys are continuously told that we should be business partners with our clients, not just patent scribes. But there are lots of ways to protect an invention. Be open and just tell us: Is the patent "for show or for go"? Is it perceived to be vital to the company or a "home run" for the university, or is it a safety filing to cover a limited advance to keep a productive inventor (or top boss) happy. Is it intended to be a shot in the dark, or part of a shotgun blast of applications into an important emerging technology? Don't walk into a car lot and say "I want your best car!" unless you really mean it.
Warren D. Woessner, Ph.D.1) Tell Your Patent Attorney What You Want Your Patent to Do.
IP attorneys are continuously told that we should be business partners with our clients, not just patent scribes. But there are lots of ways to protect an invention. Be open and just tell us: Is the patent “for show or for go”?
ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE SINGLE SOURCE OF OBJECTIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS, PRACTICAL INSIGHTS, AND NEWS IN LawJournalNewsletters
Already have an account? Sign In Now
For enterprise-wide or corporate access, please contact Customer Service at [email protected] or call 1-877-256-2473.
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2026 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
An annual tradition continues as we present the responses to our Legalweek question. For 2026, it was "where are we with prompting"?
The volume and sophistication of work hitting law firm marketing departments is accelerating. That moves the burden from responding to being ready: ready with differentiated positioning, ready with competitive intelligence, ready to get a compelling pitch to the right client before a formal process even begins. That requires more sophisticated output, produced faster, by teams that are already stretched past capacity.
In categories where products are difficult to differentiate on performance, and that describes most of the AI industry today, customers do not choose on features, they choose on trust. Brand integrity, in those markets, is a material business asset.
The annals of copyright decisions could provide a reasonably representative catalog of what our culture has been up to over the past 200 years. A Feb. 3 decision from the Southern District of New York is a case in point. It involves a sex-trafficking conspiracy, Tweets attacking a troubled crypto firm, and a claimed transfer of copyright ownership through a restitution order in a criminal case, all over an undercurrent of competing First Amendment and victim-privacy concerns.
Matthew McConaughey secured eight federal trademark registrations covering his voice and iconic catchphrases in a novel legal strategy aimed at combating AI’s unauthorized use of his voice and likeness. The move signals an important evolution in the power dynamics between talent/brands and the companies providing generative AI tools.
