Gladstone Institutes is a nonprofit medical research organization affiliated with UCSF. Patent Counsel Girard Courteau had already been shopping around for AI-based time savers, so when he met the Tradespace team at the AUTM Annual Meeting, he was intrigued.
Says Girard, “We were interested in something that would help us prepare non-confidential disclosures and be more forward thinking in identifying potential licensees.”
The three differentiators that made Gladstone’s choice clear
Having evaluated three other systems first, Girard knew that “there weren’t a lot of tools on the market that would do the same job Tradespace would do” as soon as he was introduced to the platform.
The capabilities Gladstone expected were clear:
- Licensing partner identification — “We wanted to know which companies were in the space for a particular invention, and whether they had something in trials already.”
- Marketing material creation — ”We wanted NCDs — non-confidential disclosures — that we could print out and use as marketing materials.”
- Science translation — “Could it read scientific jargon and distill it into something a layperson could actually use and understand?”
The hidden benefit of 50% faster triage: Early avoidance of costly dead ends
Once implemented, Tradespace immediately became “a game changer for Gladstone’s licensing and marketing efforts,” cutting market research and invention triage time by 30–50%.
The true time savings are greater, however, according to Girard. “When you save time identifying inventions you won’t pursue, that frees up a lot of time on the backend. You don’t waste any time or money on patenting or licensing, and you can spend the effort you conserved on other projects.”
When it comes to communicating deprioritized projects, Tradespace helps Girard’s team turn it into constructive feedback. “You can point to Tradespace and say, it’s shown us this space is pretty crowded, but here’s an area you might want to pursue.”
From 12 pages of jargon to 3-sentence abstracts that “hit all the highlights”
For licensing communications, Tradespace automatically summarizes invention records in language that resonates with both business development and IP teams. “Business development people understand the science, but they don’t want to get bogged down in the jargon. They want to know, bottom line, what does the invention do?”
“Tradespace can take a 2-3 sentence abstract out of 12 pages of invention records basically out of a scientific journal that hits all the highlights.” Again, this commercial framing loops back to research improvements too. “It instructs our investigators on research areas that have whitespace where they might want to expand.”
New strategies enabled by a program that’s paid for itself
With the time they’ve freed up, Gladstone is pursuing more sponsored research partnerships and expanding outreach to PIs. “Gladstone has grown a lot in the last few years, so we have new PIs that aren’t as aware of IP and our disclosure process. We’ll also be giving more attention to the centers that don’t disclose as much as oncology. We’re hoping to gain more invention disclosures from both groups.”
When Girard’s team first evaluated AI tools for invention evaluation and marketing, the question they asked was: “How can we afford this?” Now, after realizing the savings and reclaiming time for higher-impact work, it’s become: “How did we get along without this before?”
Quantitative wins
- 30-50% faster research and triage
- “Enough savings to cover the full cost of the platform”
