Jason Harrier on AI, Invention Harvesting, and the Patent Backlog
“[N]o no matter what enterprise you are in, you will end up with prolific innovators that you like working with but they always move to different teams, different companies.” — Jason Harrier
This episode of IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with my good friend Jason Harrier. He is the former Chief Patent Counsel for Capital One, and currently co-founder and general counsel of artificial intelligence company IP Copilot. You can listen to the entire conversation on Buzzsprout or download it wherever you listen podcasts. You can also watch on the IPWatchdog YouTube channel.
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. In this context, I asked Harrier to talk about invention harvesting. I knew from previous conversations with in-house lawyers that it was one of the most difficult, but important, aspects of their jobs. We start with a simple query: Why is invention-harvesting so difficult? And why do in-house lawyers always talk about what they have tried in the past, and what they are trying now, and what they plan to try in future, sounding like Goldilocks, always searching for the perfect solution, but never able to reach it? Harrier explained:
“Finding the best ideas within an enterprise is one of the primary goals of anybody in-house. It’s also one of the few areas where technology has made a real impact. It’s gotten better since the pandemic because more people are working remotely and you can connect to others on Zoom easier than before. It’s still a manual process to move from a small department of patents into a large enterprise. As an example, my first internal job was at Capital One. I had worked with many inventors in my firm, but never had I been responsible for finding new ideas. My first impression was that I would go and educate the inventor community. We’ll let people know about our fun patent program and let them know we’re available. You can receive a bonus for submitting your ideas. We’ll then move on to the second step. Step one is never over. This is the short answer to your query. I always tell inventors to “never get attached” because they will always move to other teams or companies. The culture of companies is changing. People are not staying at the same company as they used to. And so, there’s constant attrition and turnover of your inventor community.”
And from there we dive into a conversation about how long scientists and engineers will typically stay with the company–his answer was 18 to 24 months–which led us to broader conversation about how many in the younger generation see work not as a job with normal hours, but a project that once done allows them to move on to whatever may be next. I called this a “subcontractor mentality” and wondered what it meant for the future. “There’s something to enjoy your life while you’re young, when you have less responsibilities and can take risks… I mean, I get it. You’re young. You can do it. You don’t necessarily need that much money. You can explore the world while you still can. It’s a completely different world from what I imagined when I was a child. I would never have dreamed to do something like this.” According to Harrier, AI tools available today could help patent practitioners and patent examiners get on the same page and streamline patent prosecution.
“I don’t think AI is going to take over patent examination,” Harrier explained. “I consider AI in every aspect, from idea discovery and curation to filing and drafting of patents. It’s a tool to help you get to the gray areas. This led to a discussion about patent prosecution strategies, overly-broad claims, and how AI can contribute to streamlining the patent examination process through better prior art search and by identifying the most appropriate prior art, which is often quite different from the prior art used by an examiner. If patent practitioner and patent examiner could work together with a closed universe of the most relevant prior art found by AI the ultimate output should be better, strong, more reliable, more difficult to challenge, and the entire process should be faster and more efficient.
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Gene Quinn
Gene Quinn is an expert on patent law, innovation policy and patent law. Mr. Quinn was twice named as one of the 50 most influential people in the world
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