Critics say that patent protection is guided by only one principle. Still, solving the problem is a complex task with many angles. Today, a consortium called LOT — formed to improve how the tech world and the IP industry as a whole handles trolling — is launching a new front in its efforts. He has formed a new team, Adapt, whose mission is to identify DEI issues in the IP industry and build programs to address them.
There is a different but very effective thread that connects the world of diversity and inclusion to intellectual property.
DEI is a strong theme in the tech world, which is typically not good at inclusion and is trying to put that into perspective. The legal world has a problem with that. As a result, the world of patent litigation works like a force multiplier: You typically need engineering (or other scientific or technical) degrees as well as a law degree to practice IP law, Microsoft assistant general counsel Judy Yee – who is involved in Adapt – said in an interview, adding that there are already small multinationals. Pools result in smaller subsets.
As of 2020, a survey from the American Bar Association shows that 22% of patent attorneys and agents are women, 6.5% are racially diverse, and only 1.7% are racially diverse.
The benefits of improving those ratios are just as important as making things fair and just for all people, and giving not just more opportunities, but more people the knowledge and energy to realize those opportunities. Like the tech industry’s desire to be more inclusive, it’s about putting people in places to make decisions and building things for different audiences. Representation in the service construction and delivery area is necessary to ensure that products are suitable for this purpose.
Adapt believes the same is true for the intellectual property industry.
“The reality is that with inclusive innovation, when we pull people from marginalized communities, we create great ideas and values and products,” said Michelle Binns, Meta’s general counsel who oversees the Meta app family’s patent portfolio strategy (covering Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp) and is also working on the Adapt project. .
Lott’s interest in bringing this about comes in part from one of the rarer instances of cooperation and collaboration between companies that might otherwise compete fiercely with each other — and sometimes find themselves embroiled in IP disputes of their own, though these are considered separate from troll activities by so-called patent enforcement agents. Businesses whose main purpose is to collect patents and then go after companies they believe have infringed in order to win settlements. That, the organization’s desire to do better in its own state, gives it a unique position to advocate for programs of great importance.
The group will start its first activities from September. They include building a database of DEI programs and a directory of volunteer and sponsorship activities from DEI organizations.The idea here is to get companies interested in building more DEI initiatives. It also runs a mentorship program specifically aimed at underrepresented IP professionals. Finally, a platform and forum will be built to measure DEI analytics and share related knowledge.
Initially, Yee said, Adap will focus on the legal side of IP — that is, corporate lawyers and the broader teams working in patent law — but there’s clearly an opportunity to extend that to inventors, builders, and the people who bring them. Legal teams that help protect IP claims.
“We decided that the first phase would focus on the patent profession, but a lot of our effort went into that area,” he says of technical experts, inventors and their ambitions that might lead them into that area. “There is a pipeline.”
Patent trolls were pretty normal in the tech landscape a decade ago, and although you don’t hear about patent issues every day today, they’re certainly not going away.
“Patent trolls are on the rise,” said Lott CEO Ken Seddon, who previously worked on patent litigation for companies such as Apple, Intel and ARM. They cite the current difficult economic climate of inflation and the impact of the pandemic as forcing those who can hold on to IP assets, or often sell them to PAEs (patent enforcers, more praise). name for trolls), who in turn are campaigning against tech companies to force them.
“The Supreme Court, the White House and Congress have big issues to deal with today, so my sense is that they may have given up on patent reform for the high-tech industry.” But groups like Lotti seem to paint a picture of why that rethinking might be worth it: It has welcomed 1,200 new members since February 2021, Seddon said, with companies including behemoths like TikTok owner ByteDance but many smaller companies.
And that feeds well into the mission for both Lottery and Adaptation.
“We wanted to make the point that you have to be a big company to address diversity,” Binns said. And by that logic, a push for greater inclusion would help combat IP misuse and abuse.
