The third annual IP Dealmakers and LF Dealmakers, which is taking place at the Royal Garden Hotel in London this year, launched yesterday with an array of AI in IP workshops and continued today with panels spanning from judicial insights on the complex litigation we are seeing across Europe, to why investors and lenders are underwriting IP as a core asset class.
As well as being the official media partner of the dual event (like it was last year: June 25, 2025 ip fray article), ip fray has already been busy interviewing high-profile IP executives on the sidelines, and attending many of the panels.
Below is a short breakdown of the highlights from the first couple of days:
A fragmented SEP ecosystem
On a panel about standard-essential patent (SEP) control, Scott Hayden, Chief IP Officer at Amazon, and Jack McKinney, Director of IP at HP, both emphasized the need for more transparency in the SEP ecosystem to level the playing field.
Mr. Hayden suggested a public stack rate as a possible solution, as this would mean no competitive disadvantages to those implementing the standards. The easiest deals he has had, he revealed, are where he has been able to see (and tell his C-suite) what competitors have paid for technologies.
“Deals can be struck in five minutes,” he laughed.
Mr. Hayden noted that “[everyone] needs each other” but “for some reason”, the ecosystem has gotten into a cycle of wanting the most or the least, spending lots of time fighting about who should get what, and this problem is then exacerbated by the courts.
He referred to some of the recent court decisions in major SEP disputes – such as ZTE v. Samsung (ip fray’s latest coverage: May 12, 2026 ip fray article):
“Why do you need three answers? It’s like having three watches and asking what the time is.”
He thinks there is a better way than just litigating, but that “everyone is trying to find an advantage for themselves”.
HP’s Jack McKinney echoed a lot of what Mr. Hayden said, adding that what we may soon see is standards being implemented more slowly. In the PC industry, video technology is being increasingly disabled because the cost is too high and the value for customers isn’t there because they have alternatives, he explained.
Having a path to see licenses more transparently and present them to the C-suite would solve a lot of issues, he said.
Harold Barrault, Vice President and Head of Patent Licensing at Orange (whom ip fray inteviewed in Shanghai last year: April 15, 2025 ip fray article), provided the only SEP owner perspective on the panel.
He told audience members that patent pools are an obvious solution, as they allow companies to know the prices, and those prices are accompanied by an explanation. Perhaps, he noted, there needs to be more incentives to get more licensors to participate in pools so they can become a real, viable solution across all industries.
Luke McLeroy, Managing Member of the LFM Firm, moderated the panel, and Nina Belbl, Legal Officer at WIPO, also spoke on the panel.
Political problems
While the U.S. was up until recently a favorite for SEP owners, the UPC has provided a huge leverage point for patentees that can cause “real business pain”, Anup Misra, the founder of Misra IP Litigation, said on a panel about global IP enforcement.
Umicore’s IP head, Sean Alexander, agreed that the UPC is “selling itself” and he does not need to work too hard to convince his company’s board to use it as a venue.
But the mistake that companies may be making when using the UPC is when they use it in parallel with several other courts across the globe, said Judge Kai Härmand, Nordic-Baltic Regional Division, of the UPC:
“They take too big a slice of the pie, start parallel litigation too fast, and it really confuses the picture. Because of that, parties don’t have enough power to work on each prong – and then it is harder to settle cases globally.”
Geopolitical considerations were also a big point of discussion, with Mr. Alexander noting that these are crucial in global enforcement strategies. India and Brazil are increasingly popular, the panellists revealed, with Mr. Alexander believing that Brazil’s story has been “underrepresented”. In the past five years, it has completely transformed its patent filing system – and even its courts have become much faster.
Meanwhile, China – which was getting to a similar point before the pandemic – has slowed down. And, it has become a “political problem”, according to Mr. Misra. Judge Härmand noted that there does not only “seem to be political tension” – in fact, the recent World Trade Organization decision (April 23, 2025 ip fray article) confirms its existence.
The panel was moderated by Cassandra Derham, the Head of IP at Amadeus, and also featured Jamie Simpson, Chief Policy Officer & Counsel, Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP).
Are AI lawyers the future?
On a panel featuring judges from across Europe, all panellists warned the audience about the danger of using AI in patent litigation. Both Judge Alexandre Au-Yong Oliveira, Judge, Court of Appeals of Lisbon, and Judge Fabian Richter Reuschle, Deputy Presiding Judge, Stuttgart Regional Court, shared horror stories of when lawyers have used AI in drafting patent claims or writing documents.
However, Judge Oliveira also noted that a 10-year banking antitrust cartel case that wasted significant amounts of money and resources may have been resolved with AI.
Meanwhile, Lord Justice Colin Birss, Chancellor of the UK High Court, went as far as to say that there is potential for AI when it comes to underrepresented parties:
“There are people getting better legal representation from ChatGPT than they would have ever gotten without it. I am not criticising them for not using lawyers. It is not a sin. Lawyers are expensive. And they cannot always advise on every case – especially the ones that are very vast.”
He also noted that he has been using AI internally to manage documents and ensure there are no internal inaccuracies in his decisions.
The panel was moderated by James Dobias of McDermott Will & Schulte and also featured Judge Kai Härmand of the UPC.
AI amplifies, does not replace, expertiseÂ
On Monday, Dealmakers Forums also held a half-day of workshops on the role of AI in IP. A panel started off discussions – moderated by Charles Eldering of CAsE Analysis, who questioned panelists on the best (and worst) use cases for AI and whether AI tools should be built in-house or outsourced.
Orange’s IP Business Intelligence and Portfolio Manager, Alexis Cheynel, noted that the company has been implementing AI in its practices for years now, including for fraud detection. As well as using outside platforms, it has built its own in-house tool “Dites-nous Tout”, which was constructed in partnership with other big LLMs.
It uses these tools for the classification and analysis of patents, standard-essential patent (SEP) analysis, and licensing preparation. But, he warns, it should be used in a “pragmatic” and “targeted” way.
The company believes that AI does not have the same maturity level at all stages, and while its best case-use is patent portfolio classification, the more granular the level you get to, the weaker its accuracy. So it does not use it all in patent prosecution, and even forbids it to outside counsel:
“We believe AI cannot truly understand tech and cannot truly reason – for a long time people thought it would get better the more info it is fed – but we have come to the conclusion that it cannot, and it is too risky to use it for patent prosecution.”
AI “amplifies expertise”, it should not replace it, Mr. Cheynel added.
These feelings about AI were mostly echoed by his fellow panelists, including Alex Stroe, the Co-Founder & CEO of AI patent monetisation tool Patent Watch.
“[AI] takes people who are good at what they do and makes them better,” he said. Meanwhile, when it has to make decisions alone, there are a lot of places it can go wrong, he believes, adding that even if AI does 95% of the work, no matter how much things improve, humans will always have to do the last 5%.
However, he emphasized that AI is especially important for small companies:
“You have to use it if you want to be efficient.”
And that, while it is impressive that companies can build their own in-house AI tools, there is currently a “graveyard” of tools that have come out of these efforts now lying in space, alongside departments that have fallen apart over such attempts.
Ultimately, he said, companies will spend the same amount financially on subscriptions to AI tools as hiring patent engineers to launch their own.
Yann Dietrich, who heads up IP, AI and Tech Regulations at Atos Group (and whom we also interviewed last year: July 22, 2025 ip fray article), appeared very pro-AI, noting:
“Claude is my savior.”
Atos is betting a lot on AI, and even more on agentic AI, he revealed, rolling out a training program across all departments. In IP, he uses it a lot for adversarial testing, and as a sort of “sparring partner”, he said.
But he also underlines the dangers of not using AI properly – highlighting the importance of a good prompt. This can be anything up to 80,000 lines, he said.
The panel also featured Alexandre Ribeil, a senior manager of IP at Amadeus.
IP funding on the rise
One of the final panels of the day featured a discussion about IP as collateral, moderated by Max Bernstein of CAC Specialty. The panelists, Eli Gilsohn, VP of IP at biotech company Resolution Therapeutics, and Francis Rushford, Head of IP Finance at Pretium, discussed how they either use IP to raise funds or what investors are looking for when companies present their IP as collateral. Both agreed that there are risks with using IP in this way, but reminded the audience that it can have substantial returns if done properly.
Mr. Rushford especially noted that SEPs could generate billions in the long-term, but it’s the duration aspect of these types of patents that causes issues. He revealed that his company is exploring IP lending as a source of financing, too, although this is a much tougher process.
Generally, however, Mr. Rushford said recent actions in the U.S. have been reassuring for investors. Howard Lutnick’s patent remarks during his confirmation hearing – and the actions that have since followed by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John A. Squires, enabling discretionary denials (December 2, 2025 ip fray article) – together mean funders like himself feel the risk of funding inter partes reviews (IPRs) is substantially lower.
Looking to the future, Mr. Rushford said he believes there will be more patent litigation in Europe than ever before in even just the next five years:
“Companies are starting to see that they can get revenue more efficiently this way, and it will become as common as it is in the U.S.”
He added that enforcement outside the U.S. and Europe will likely intensify substantially, too, including in jurisdictions such as South Korea.