Reflecting on two years of GenAI with Tradespace’s VP of Client Success & IP Operations

For my last blog post of the year, I’m bringing you a conversation I had with Marcia Chang, our very own VP of Client Success and IP Operations, about the current state of AI for IP. As I always say, AI — especially AI for IP — needs expertise, and Marcia brings 20 years of IP expertise to the topic, as you’ll see.

AS: You became interested in steering your IP career toward AI because of your time leading IP operations at Applied Materials. How did that experience bring you to where you are today, working here?

MC: I realized I was spending a lot of my time dealing with operational processes and legaltech tool inefficiencies rather than exercising my passion for strategic legal work and problem-solving for my clients. I was leading the IP Operations team and function for the company, while at the same time acting as the IP strategy counsel for the Office of the CTO. Every week, I had to juggle the demands of my clients with the day-to-day IP operations of a portfolio of tens of thousands of assets.

With the rise of AI and its ability to reshape and truly revolutionize our legal practice, I had an “aha” moment that made it clear to me the time was ripe for change. AI has a liberating aspect to it when it frees us from mundane tasks to focus on strategic legal work. This liberating aspect brought me back to the time I was at Metawave, a startup that was working on beamsteering technology for autonomous vehicles that can free us from driving tasks to focus on more meaningful activities. That “aha” moment and liberating aspect felt like I was connecting the dots all throughout my career leading me to the amazing opportunity to work with you and the Tradespace team.

AS: You recently shared with the team a great TV special Oprah did on AI aimed at a mass audience. In it, she said the stakes are too high for people to sit out from AI. What are the stakes, to you, for IP?

MC: ChatGPT as we know it was released two years ago now, in November 2022. In this time, the resistance to AI among legal departments has finally started to break. Meanwhile, on the business side, AI adoption is becoming a top-down mandate, something referenced in your recent interview with Evisort CEO Jerry Ting.

AI isn’t just a potential solution that could help IP teams anymore. For some teams, AI is adding value across the IP lifecycle every day. So the stakes have become much higher than testing out a powerful new tool. It’s now to the level of fulfilling a duty to shareholders and employees. Without AI, organizations will soon be wasting resources and letting their people get left behind on this important skill.

AS: How do you recommend IP professionals build proficiency in AI?

MC: A conundrum with this question is that IP professionals really are dependent on their organizations to be able to use AI to do IP work — you can’t use ChatGPT for IP. If your employer won’t adopt AI, embrace it in your personal life as much as you can. But if your company has crossed this hurdle, I’d say to simply use it as much as possible. Any decent AI tool is going to be as intuitive to use as the mobile apps we’re already accustomed to, so learning it isn’t going to be about pushing buttons.

With gen AI, the learning curve is about getting enough practice so you can reduce the time it takes to get things done, and so you can build trust in your results. Even though models are learning rapidly, they still aren’t perfect. We can rely on AI to do what we ask it to do, but it’s still important to verify and the information it produces to ensure accuracy, similar to when partners review junior attorneys’ work products — “Trust, but verify.” Knowing this, can you take the headstart AI gives you while leaving those imperfections behind to, say, report back to your leadership faster? That’s how I’d measure AI proficiency for IP.

AS: When talking about what AI does for IP, it’s kind of two conversations, right? What AI handles literally, and then the human things AI enables IP professionals to do more of. What are the human impacts of AI that you’re most excited about?

MC: The human parts of IP that I’m excited will get more attention after we get time back from AI are talent development and business-legal collaboration.

Someone who made a huge impact on my career was one of my managers at HP. He always said, “My job as a leader is to find new leaders.” It’s so important to have mentors that believe in you and can be your cheerleader. But for that to happen, leaders need to not be afraid that team members are going to take their jobs. This manager was the first leader of mine who I felt wasn’t afraid of my ambition and asked me where I wanted my career to go. How appreciated, supported, and confident that question made me feel was a huge, fundamental lesson for me. It taught me to put myself in the shoes of the team when I became a people manager; to be empathetic when guiding people in their careers.

I don’t believe that most IP leaders don’t care about developing the talent on their teams, but it’s something that requires time and effort, and so many of us simply don’t have enough juice to do everything that we should in a day. Talent development is one of those important but not urgent things that AI will allow for more of.

AS: That’s an incredible story. Tell us about the business-legal collaboration part?

Something I hear about a lot from IP professionals is the difficulty they have balancing the goals and priorities of both their legal teams and their business teams. It’s tough: IP attorneys, who are focused on compliance and risk, need to be able to explain the legal risks to our clients while ultimately letting them decide on whether they’re going to accept the risks. And the legal team needs to be a trusted partner for us to be let in on these questions by business teams, who are focused on growing revenue and market share, getting products out, and innovation. There’s often a noticeable difference in culture between the two, which can generate tension and misunderstanding.

A lot of the time, IP professionals are siloed within the legal team, when really we need to be embedded with the business team to get the communication and collaboration going. Being immersed in the business to be a true member of the team is the only way to make sure your IP strategy is tied to the business strategy every step of the way, which ultimately builds a higher quality and more valuable portfolio. Freeing up the time to physically spend time with your business team will be another benefit of AI.

AS: Thanks, Marcia. AI really is reaching a turning point in the legal and IP communities, and I’m sure what you’ve shared here will be educational and motivating for those who are still on the fence.