Hillery L. Nye

When budgets tighten, in-house IP teams are often told to “use AI to cut costs.” For patent and IP lawyers, the real question is how to do that without undermining enforceability, trade secret protection, or privilege. In a new piece for Managing IP I share a practitioner’s roadmap for IP counsel which we use also at Glean to treat generative AI as an enterprise tool in the innovation cycle; run sensitive workflows on enterprise-grade platforms with no-train, no-retain commitments; and build governance that matches how inventors and outside counsel actually work, including documentation of human inventorship and prompts. If you’re advising inventors or managing a patent portfolio, here are a few themes I’m seeing in practice: 🔹 Use AI to accelerate claim drafting, prior-art review, and portfolio analysis 🔹 Assume consumer-facing tools are incompatible with trade secret “reasonable measures,” cross-border data-transfer rules, and litigation hold obligations 🔹 Build AI vendor diligence into your IP risk model: security, privacy, and AI-governance standards (SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001), data isolation, and clear DPAs/NDAs 🔹 Pair policy with practice: training for inventors and IP teams, plus secure enterprise AI platforms embedded into your invention disclosure, prosecution, and IP workflows Full article linked below, and on my LinkedIn profile: https://lnkd.in/gNScYKkT

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Interesting case if you like copyright, creation, industrial designs or music.. Fender wins copyright case in Germany A landmark German ruling has granted copyright protection to the Fender Stratocaster® body design (see left on the picture). For decades, the "S-Style" body was largely seen as a generic platform—almost like the shape of a hammer or a screwdriver. Now it is a work of art... Why this matters: 1. Well... first because Fender is Fender. The Stratocaster is the iconic model of guitar played by Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa, Mark Knopfler, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Buddy Holly, Dave Murray (Iron Maiden), Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Kurt Cobain, John Frusciante (RHCP)... to name a few... 2. It targets manufacturers selling in the EU regardless of where they are based (e.g., China). 3. It apparently shifts the focus from the headstock (the most distinctive feature) to the body shape itself. 4. The length of copyright protection: usually lasts 70 years after the creator's death. Leo Fender who created the Strat died in 1991. So a copyright could run until 2061. PS: The peghead shape was created by Paul Bigsby who died in 1968. The Big Question: What happens now to brands like PRS and their Silver Sky (right on the picture)? If the body is protected art, a different headstock might no longer be a "get out of jail free" card. There are many Strat body clones out there... What’s your take? Should the Strat body be considered a "universal tool" part of the public domain or should it be Fender’s private monopoly? Should it matter that it has been so copied over the years? Can a monopoly be reclaimed ....? See here: https://lnkd.in/d46ZrcDd NB: We would need to see the fully English translated decision to conduct a more thourough analysis ... hopefully soon. #Copyright #IntellectualProperty #Fender #GuitarDesign

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Privacy Isn’t a Policy, It’s a Design Choice The $530,000 settlement between California’s Attorney General and Sling TV is a wake-up call: privacy failures often start in design, not in fine print. Sling TV buried its opt-out behind cookie settings that didn’t actually stop data sharing. Users had to hunt for hidden links and fill out redundant forms even when the company already had their info. No in-app opt-out, no clarity, no generosity toward the user. Now the company must redesign its interfaces to make privacy controls simple and visible the way they should’ve been all along. Because real privacy isn’t written in 30-page policies. It’s built into the experience. #PrivacyByDesign #UXDesign #DataEthics #CCPA #UserExperience #Trust https://lnkd.in/eH8RjNDU

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