Q&A with Zeev Fisher - Founder of Pekama IP Community > Enabling global group of intellectual property experts to work together

Zeev Fisher is an Intellectual Property expert based in Cambridge, UK. As a lawyer, he is qualified in the UK Solicitor and an Israeli Advocate. Zeev has been managing intellectual property firms and advising clients (universities as well as companies) on a broad range of matters for the past 10 years. He is a professional problem-solver and strategist who helps universities and forward-looking companies deal with building up an intellectual property portfolio of true value.

Zeev's current practice focuses on trademarks and design matters and particularly on handling conflicts in these fields. Zeev is also involved in patent matters together with other members of his firm and has a particular interest in patent invalidity practice. 

I got an opportunity to speak with Zeev on Pekama - A global IP community. Zeev is the founder of Pekama, which is currently growing in terms of new members and already boasts an impressive list of member companies and countries.

Q&A with Zeev Fisher - Founder, Pekama IP Community

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Nilesh: Why is the platform named Pekama - is there a story behind coming up with this name? 

Zeev: Pekama means "multiply by a few" in Hebrew. I'm from Israel and Hebrew is my first language and this name symbolizes how people working together are empowered and are stronger as a community. 

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Nilesh: How would you like a new member to explain what is Pekama to another prospective member? 

Zeev: I would like them to tell a new prospective member that there is a great new way to grow their IP practice - joining an online community that rewards firms for working with other members and thus allowing attorneys to rely on hard evidence as opposed to hunches when making important business decisions. 

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Nilesh: What was the one tipping point that you can recollect where you took the final decision to start Pekama? 

Zeev: I realized that this needs to be done when I moved countries from Israel to the UK and this stressed out how difficult it is for people in different places to work together efficiently with the existing technology. The tipping point was probably when David Gill, a great person, and a wonderful mentor, asked me why won't I make a proper company out of these ideas. 

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Nilesh: What is the software part of Pekama and what is the function of the proprietary technology that you mentioned in your FAQ? 

Zeev: There is a lot of software and proprietary technology in Pekama, covering the entire project management cycle. The most important bit is probably the hybrid messaging system which combines the benefit of modern messaging systems (security, automation, tracking) with email, which is something that lawyers are obsessed with. 

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Nilesh: For a community model, what are the challenges that you envision and how are you preparing to face them? 

Zeev: In every community, you have the people who "don't get it" and think they will earn something by conducting their business out of the community - e.g. use Pekama to find a good foreign associate and then leave the system so that this foreign associate won't need to pay us. From a business perspective, this makes no sense because by sending work via the platform you validate yourself and shout to the world that you are a great firm that plays with others and contribute to the community and this is how firms grow and get work on our platform. The main way we address it is simply by explaining this over and over again. 

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Nilesh: What do you think the future holds for IP services, in terms of automation, new intelligent databases coming up, etc.? 

Zeev: I'm no prophet but the easiest way to assess what's coming to legal service and IP, in particular, is look around at industries that advance faster and see what they do. We bring platform, automation and messaging to the IP space. Others will bring bots, AI, better experiences for end clients. 

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Nilesh: Any future/upcoming enhancements and plans for Pekama that you would like to share with the readers? 

Zeev: Pekama is about to change its design to a more slick design. We are adding a feature to allow getting quotes for full national phase entries and other services in many jurisdictions in a single 2-minute wizard. Plenty more is planned and depends on our users. 

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Further Information:

[1] Pekama Ltd. (2017). Gust. Retrieved 4 June 2017, from https://gust.com/companies/pekama-ltd
[2] Law firm takes the plunge as minority investor in legal tech company. (2015). Legal Futures. Retrieved 4 June 2017, from http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/law-firm-takes-the-plunge-as-minority-investor-in-legal-tech-company
[3] Pekama Community - Getting an Introduction and Sending a Case. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 4 June 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIqBcqHX1ws

Q&A with Donal O'Connell (MD, Chawton Innovation Services Ltd.) > On Trade Secrets & the Hazel tool for Trade Secret Asset Management

Donal O'Connell's introduction with respect to the IPR field can be summarised in four short (but strong) sentences:

• Ex-VP of R&D and Director of IP at Nokia
• Adjunct Professor of IP at Imperial College
• IAM 300 member for the past few years
• Author of two books and over 100 papers on various aspects of IP

He is currently serving as Managing Director of Chawton Innovation Services, a company that offers the following products and services

• IP education, 
• IP consultancy
• IP Risk Management solution
• Trade Secret Asset Management solution
• Open Source Software Risk & Compliance

Q&A with Donal O'Connell (MD, Chawton Innovation Services Ltd.)

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Nilesh: Trade secrets are being widely considered these days to be an important form of IP. Many consider trade secrets to be a decent alternative to filing patents considering the threat of the patent being used as a recipe book by competition - what according to you are the factors making trade secrets and their management so important?

Donal: Well, there are forces at play which are increasing the importance of trade secrets and trade secret asset management:

1. Recent law changes - in particular, the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) in the USA (Trade secret misappropriation is now a federal crime in the US thanks to the Defend Trade Secrets Act passed in April 2016) and the EU Directive on Trade Secrets
2. OECD BEPS guidelines which include trade secrets in their definition of intangible assets
3. IP reform in key jurisdictions challenging other forms of IP
4. Cyber security - given that the hackers are oftentimes after the trade secrets
5. Companies embracing open innovation and sharing more and more with others
6. Changing nature of employment (Constant movement of employees amongst competitors)

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Nilesh: But trade secrets are secrets, right? What's the need for their management?

Donal: There can be many types of trade secrets; for example:

A Company's trade secrets assets may be found across different functions in the organisation and include:

1. Some algorithms within the R&D function 
2. Customer data managed by Sales & Marketing functions
3. Some filtration process held by Operations in the factory
4. Some negative know-how in the form of failed tests and test data held by the Test function ·
5. Some new business plans by the Business Development function 

These trade secrets are of tremendous value to the company and among the most valuable intangible assets, it possesses. 

Now, let's imagine if one of these important trade secrets is stolen: 

by a former executive of the company, a disgruntled employee, a supplier, a competitor or some hacker. 

Let's assume that the theft was of an Algorithm XYZ, and it took place at Date A and a court case takes place at Date B.

At the court case, the company has to prove the following 3 things:

1. Algorithm XYZ was a trade secret as of Date A
2. Accused stole the trade secret
3. Theft of trade secret caused damage to the company

Now, without proper documentation and management, it will be very difficult for the company to prove the first point.

Hence, it is important to maintain a proper trade secret documentation process wherein important metadata about the trade secret is maintained in a central location without disclosing the trade secret itself. This metadata can be data points such as:

1. The name or title of the trade secret
2. The date that trade secret was created
3. The person or persons who created the trade secret
4. The physical location of the trade secret
5. The legal owner of the trade secret
6. The person or persons responsible for managing the trade secret
7. The type of trade secret (technical, operational, process, financial, etc.)
8. The persons with authorised access to the trade secret
9. The value of the trade secret to the business
10. The protection mechanisms in place to protect the trade secrets
11. Whether the trade secret has been shared with a 3rd party or not
12. The expiration date of the trade secret (if applicable)

I have identified over a hundred individual pieces of metadata associated with a trade secret and I continue to identify additional useful data points.

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Nilesh: How did you come up with the Hazel tool for trade secret management? What's the story?

Donal: Our company, Chawton Innovation Services, started the design of the Hazel Trade Secret Asset Management tool back in 2015, prompted to do so by one of the licensees of our Alder IP Risk Management Tool (another IP solution we have in the market).

We were most fortunate to have had great input from one of the architects of the DTSA, an ex-trade secret manager at Syngenta, a US IP lawyer, the GC of a biotech company and some others during the design and development stages of the Hazel tool.

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Nilesh: What customer base are you targeting for this tool?

Donal: We had our first licensee back in May 2016 just when the DTSA was being passed into law. We have operating companies and Legal IP Firms as licensees today.

We have started to have interest from IP Insurance Firms, Accountancy & Tax Firms, General Consultancy Firms and Cyber Security Providers but these discussions are still in their infancy but proving of great interest. I would hope to find some licensees in these sectors in the not too distant future, particularly in the finance sector.

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Nilesh: What lies ahead for the Hazel tool? Are there any enhancements in store?

Donal: Some enhancements have been made to the Hazel tool since mid-2016 thanks to great feedback from various entities during that time period. For example, the enhancement to the value and costs feature coming in the June 2017 release is thanks to guidance from one of the major Accountancy & Tax Firms.

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You can find out more about Hazel Tool here.

Further Reading:

[1]  Donal O'Connell's Linkedin articles - available here, here, here, and here.
[2]  US Attorney Sterling Miller's article on Hazel tool for automating the trade secret management process - available here
[3] Patents or Trade Secrets - a strategic choice by Kanzlei Warneke - available here

Future of Patent Research & Changes in Industry > Doris Spielthenner, CEO of Ambercite > thinkPat Interview

Ambercite leverages the citation network of patents and the power of their connections to provide innovative solutions in patent analytics. I have tried their tool, and it is amazing.

Imagine the work and the effort put in by examiners by having all citation information at your fingertips. Imagine the power of having a social network of patents!

We speak with Doris Spielthenner, CEO of Ambercite, to get a sneak peek at what drove her to start Ambercite, what were some challenges she faced, what are her thoughts on this changing industry and market, and what does she and Ambercite have in store for us.

Q&A with Doris Spielthenner - CEO, Ambercite

What motivated you to start working on Ambercite?

A few years back when I worked on a data analytics project for Kodak in the US, I realized two things. 

• First, that patent information is one of the greatest sources of business intelligence of our time. It tells you about a field's or a company's trajectory, how and which assets an organization utilizes post-M&A, a company's growth focus and revenue protection strategy or approach to collaboration. 

• Second, that there were not enough tools or organizations that would attempt to make use of those data points and many insights that can be drawn from patent data simply had remained uncovered. 

Most tools were and still are database products that allowed you to search a repository of information and then let you do basic statistics across that data, such as how many patents in field x, filed by whom, trends over time, etc. Yet, more advanced analytics can be applied.

How did it all begin?

I tested my thinking with patent attorneys and people from technology companies in and around San Francisco, where I lived at the time, and most seemed to agree. 

A patent attorney, Antoinette Konski, of Foley LLP, who has an immense depth of experience in the stem cell field, and I decided to interrogate the stem cell patent landscape using these new ways of patent analytics that I proposed. The results of our work ended up getting published in Nature Biotechnology.

Konski and Spielthenner, "Stem Cell Patents, A Landscape Analysis," Nature Biotechnology (Vol. 27(8), pages 722-726, 2009) Link

This then led to a number of speaking engagements in industry forums and with each such opportunity or follow-on client project, I increased my own understanding of what are the most valuable legal or business insights and how can they be teased out of patent data. 

Upon moving to Australia I looked for partners who would share my vision, and I co-founded Ambercite together with a leading Australian IP attorney/law firm, Griffith Hack and our CTO Ben Palmer. Ben impressed upon me with his fast way of big data interrogation and intuitive way of representing insights, all stemming from his background in Artificial Intelligence and software for the gaming and defense industry.

Do you think few years down the line patent landscaping and searches will be fully automated with no human involvement?

Funny, you should say that. The first service we created is a patent landscaping service, which we still have not turned into a fully automated software as a service. 

We find there is a strong need for patent landscaping, but the business or R&D insights that people want to draw from those maps are not vanilla. 

Patent landscaping can be a very complex exercise and it is hard to strike the right balance between giving people full control over the tool,  providing them with 100 ways to make decisions or interrogate results, which adds complexity and increases barrier of access and use. Or on the other end of the continuum taking that control and choice away from people and have the machine spit out results, expecting users to trust the intelligence of the black box. 

We have not yet found the holy grail and therefore are continuing to offer patent landscaping as a hybrid between service and automated software, which in the end of the day is a great way to learn more about user requirements and building a relationship. 

What can be some future solutions from Ambercite? What are you working on?

We found that Ambercite products can be a great complementary addition to what other platforms or organizations are already doing with a traditional keyword-based approach to patent searching and analytics. 

Therefore we are releasing an API that let's others integrate the Ambercite "smart data" or search results from "Cluster Searching" into their tools. 

We are also working on an advanced patent watch service that is built on the smarts of Cluster Searching. It will alert users to new patent applications our algorithms predict to be similar, based not on keywords or patent class codes, but on sophisticated citation analysis, even if just one citation might be known.

What are some of the challenges you face? How have they changed over time as the company grew?

Being Australia-based of course we are fighting the tyranny of distance, then again today's communication tools allow to run webinars or conference calls anytime, anywhere. 

Building a strong and reliable database poses a challenge to anyone, specifically as we rely heavily on the quality of citation data that is available. Over the past years, as citation data and the use thereof has become more important, the quality of citation data provided by the patent offices has become better and more widely available. 

Although using patent indicators for automated insight generation is an older concept, its actual intelligent implementation has taken quite a stride recently. What are your thoughts on this growing competition?

I believe the emergence of free search tools such as Google Patents, Patentlens or Espacenet has created real pressure to innovate onto traditional IP database providers because these platforms now have to prove that they can provide significant value-add over free products.

There's also a number of new niche patent analytics companies out there and we will probably see this market converge. 


However, I also see another trend. My background is in customer analytics and if you look to that industry you can see that there has been a shift towards shortening the chain of command between analyst and decision maker.

Marketing or Customer Managers now have direct access to intuitive dashboards that let them derive insights and make decisions. In the IP space, there is a lot of workload on the few patent analysts in the organisation that have access to database tools. If anything with new analytics capability these tools are growing in complexity currently increasing the distance within an organisation between knowledge discovery and decision making.

At Ambercite we are trying to create smart tools, everyone in the organisation can access and understand. 

Do you think the patent databases with their current developments in common citation document etc. might give out analytics /intelligent solutions / smarter search options in future for free?

Patent Offices would have the capacity to provide such options for free, however, will be very wary of moving into the private market space. For other database providers to offer such services for free and survive the business model might have to be supported along the lines of a Google. 


Because patent data and people's patent searches or search strategies are a source of business intelligence I believe "industry", i.e. larger technology corporations or IP attorney/law firms will always have a need for protected, private search and business intelligence environments and will be prepared to pay for that sophistication and access.

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I believe automated patent analytics is the way of the future, and keeping that in mind, Ambercite and Doris, Thank You! Keep up the good work!

Changing face of research with Peter Vanderheyden & Cheryl Milone - Article One Partners - thinkPat Interview

With articleone reaching the $6M mark (paid in researcher rewards) recently, we are experiencing a shift in the way research is conducted.

Of course, crowdsourced research has been around for quite a while, this milestone reached by articleone, one of the spearheading crowdsourcing research firms, clearly shows us that crowdsourcing is being preferred for research, and many researchers are considering this as an income source.
The biggest pro of platforms like article one, according to me, is the flexibility it gives to researchers - Anyone with an understanding of the subject matter, of any age group, with any qualification, having an access to the internet can take up a study and try their hand, and stand a chance of winning the associated reward.

That being said, crowdsourcing comes with a big con for researchers as well - the competition.

This is good for the clients for whom the research is conducted, what this means is an uncertainty of income. Unless you give quality references, and unless you are quick, you may only look at the reward figure.

However, an opportunity such as this, especially for researchers based in underdeveloped and developing countries is more than welcome.

While we may believe non-crowdsourcing research firms may provide an additional confidentiality, article one has tackled this issue as well. With all the parameters we may believe that crowdsourcing may take over the entire research spectrum; however, the only problem would then be the uncertainty of minimum pay for researchers. But then, if all companies seeking research shift to crowdsourcing, maybe this takeover would be inevitable. This may even make the conventional research firms to shift to crowdsourcing in whatever extent they can, to survive.

I am a proud part of the article one community, and when I had just started as a new researcher I always tried my hand at new studies. It was a proud moment for me to put across my questions to Peter Vanderheyden, President of Article One Partners and Cheryl Milone, Founder & Chairman of Article One Partners on their views on crowdsourcing and the future of technology & patent research.

Q&A with Cheryl Milone & Peter Vanderheyden - ArticleOne Partners

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PV: Peter Vanderheyden, President of Article One Partners
CM: Cheryl Milone, Founder & Chairman
MT: Mikaela Tierney, Marketing & Community Manager

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Nilesh - Although this may be difficult, do you have a statistical analysis of the origin of researchers, especially the winners and the runner-ups? It would be interesting to see which fields, countries, backgrounds most of them belong to.

MT- With over 30,000 Researchers on the AOP platform, our Community is extremely diverse in terms of Researcher backgrounds. We have AOP Researchers from 170 different countries with experience in a vast array of technology areas. There are over 950 different Study Winners from over 35 countries, including Armenia, Colombia, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and much more. Some of our Researchers and their personal storiesare featured in our “Featured Researcher” blog post series, which can be seen here.

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Nilesh - What do you see as some of the pros and cons, from client's perspective, of taking the crowdsourcing route?

PV- With our full product line there are really no "con's" so to speak. With "only" CrowdSearch we would end up with a price point out of line with some use cases, such as patentability or novelty searching. Our product line now addresses these various use cases. Having said that, we have a number of products that leverage the crowd and are clearly meeting the needs of our client base.

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Nilesh - Is confidentiality an issue?

MT: Marshall Phelps and Cheryl Milone have shared their insights on the perceived risk of discovery and importance of confidentiality in previous AOP Blog posts, which may be interesting to read. The topic of discovery (and AOP’s best practices) was also discussed in Cheryl’s latest article published in The Federal Lawyer’s December issue, available to read here. We also recently released an “AOP Snapshot” video on the topic of Discovery art Article One, which may be helpful in answering questions and quelling the perceived risk – this was narrated by Cheryl Milone.
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Nilesh - This Thanksgiving, I am sure you would have received many thanks from researchers you have rewarded over the years. How does it feel to have been the changing body for so many lives?

CM - The AOP community is the most gratifying area of the company for me. When I thought about my Thanksgiving blessings, I counted the community high on my personal list. It is a leap of faith to work on a platform like ours, relying on a review process outside of your control. We are so very honoured that the researchers have taken this leap of faith with us and we hope to continue to be worthy of their trust and valuable time.This experience marks the best of what I could have chosen to do in my work life, creating work for others and measuring success purely on a merit basis. I think people who are drawn to this type of work think similarly, we enjoy substantive thinking reflection and productivity; that focus on an economic level and job creation level is what makes our economy grow. Thanks so very much to you and the whole AOP researcher community - it is just an honour to work with you.

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Nilesh - I have seen Article One grow, and I am proud of being a part of the community. What was the feeling when you reached the 6M mark?

CM - As we are about 6 years old, we continue the tradition of distributing about $1 million annually in Rewards to our community. While I know that number will grow, I think we have proven our model in this period with compensation on the level of worldwide brands who also do other types of crowdsourcing contests. When I think of high-level statistics, I quickly return to what it means on an individual basis - the fact that multiple researchers use the same phrase when speaking about AOP: "This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me."

It is such an amazing feeling to know that, as a company with such a strong community, we are supporting to, college educations, and life-changing incomes in developing countries. I spoke at the USPTO Roundtable on Crowdsourcing last week, and I focused on what high-level statistics mean for the individual and how we must, at all levels, honour substance and value created by each contributor in order to truly make changes. Changes may come more slowly on that basis, but the foundation of our objective is to improve patent quality; by taking this approach, the result will be deeper and richer and, in the long term, more successful.

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Nilesh - What is the next aim? Do you have internal milestones defined?

PV - Our goal is to expand our value proposition to our clients by providing more earnings opportunities related to the skills of our research community. One helps drive the other in a very synergistic way.

This has led the expansion of our product line from just CrowdSearch Studies to now include ExpertSearch, FlashSearch, AlphaSearch, Mapping Studies and Surveys. As you might expect, there are other products on the drawing board and, like all businesses, we have ever increasing financial and business objectives to guide us.
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Nilesh - I have seen Article One grow with changes - changes in rules, rewards, etc. There is a need to keep researchers motivated. How do you do it?

PV - Great question. Managing a community takes diligent effort and observation as well as communication with the members of the community. Our policies and changes have always been focused on helping the community focus their time in productive and meaningful ways as we increase quality.

At the same time, we're attentive to our award levels and the odds of researchers winning compensation for their efforts - too low and they won't participate, too high and we can't operate the business, so it's a balance. The other driver of our policies is a fairness doctrine. We do our best to keep a level playing field for all researchers and to provide incentives for doing good work (more submission opportunities for example) and less incentive for doing poor work or just providing what might appear to be random input (by getting fewer submission opportunities).

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Nilesh - Do you believe crowdsourcing can replace and reduce the importance of standard research firms?

PV - Clearly the answer is yes. At the end of the day, clients want good research and value. If we provide that in more abundance than the alternatives then we win - if not, we lose. Our product line now gives clients the opportunity to engage us on many different levels and for many different use cases (some that compete with traditional research firms, some that don't) and the Crowd will remain as a key element to our value proposition.

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Nilesh - Is this in any way seen to be preferred by clients?

PV - Again, yes. Our success in developing a blue chip client base is a testimony to the efficacy of what we do (and to the Crowd in particular). We have a growing client list of repeat users and users who come to us as a matter of practice. Many of these clients have helped us develop the new products that continue to drive our growth.

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Nilesh - Patent searching skills required for validity and prior art searches are slowly going to decrease in the future. This is because of the development of stronger algorithms, increased computing power, and high availability of information. What are your thoughts?

PV - I think not. I've been in the patent information business since the late 1990's and have seen enormous change and development in patent data and prior art research. While all of these tools can help the process (and do), it will remain a largely human activity for the foreseeable future. The breadth of what is considered "prior art" is daunting and one can never be 100% comprehensive in their searching (unless they found the silver bullet). One might even argue that as access to prior art increases the job becomes even more daunting.

Further, it's the interpretation of the art that matters when it comes to patents and litigation. Without the tools, content and access we see today the job might be all but impossible, so the presence of these things helps make it more manageable but it is still an enormous challenge to applicants and patent offices globally and is showing no signs of abating soon.

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We love you article one and you rock!