In June, Atos, a cybersecurity, cloud, and computing services provider, announced the sale of its Advanced Computing business to the French government for €410 million (June 3, 2025 CastleGrowth article). This operation means Atos will divest a part of the business which represents a very significant part of its patents, with a third of the IP team going with it, reveals Yann Dietrich, who has been Atos’s head of IP since May 2019.
Mr. Dietrich sat down with ip fray to talk about his career to date, how much, despite the restructuring, Atos’s perception of IP has changed since he first joined, how IP is not a “legal” question but a “business model” question, and the increasing importance of trade secrets.
When Mr. Dietrich first joined Atos in 2019, the company’s General Counsel at the time was looking for someone who would help him reorganize the IP function and place IP at the heart of value creation. So the IP head rebuilt everything: from recruitment, to building up the team’s skills, to how it was organized, and the governance of IP.
He notes that the most important goal he helped achieve was rebuilding the trust and visibility in IP. One way in which this was done was cataloguing all the IP with the service offering, and using ChatGPT to produce high-level explanations of what each patent brings to the customers, so that every single staff member, including salespeople, could truly understand the reality of what is being brought to the table.
Previously, salespeople were “absolutely unaware” of the IP Atos owned. But now, when talking to customers, patents demonstrate that the company is innovating – and this cuts conversations with them really short, in a positive way, Mr. Dietrich explains. And, people across all departments, with no link to R&D, from marketing and sales, have become very interested in what we do, he says, adding:
“It helps to bring the innovation back to the business.”
Visibility was another major goal that Mr. Dietrich has achieved. Since his appointment, he has also taken on a shared role of steering Atos’s AI and tech regulations legal department. As part of that, he helps with the company’s contributions to AI policy, compliance with EU regulations, and as an expert for the Global Partnership for AI.
This expansion of the IP department’s offerings was because of “our ability to really understand the tech”, he says. The IP head believes there is a tendency for IP people to hide themselves a little, to “hide in the corner” – they fear taking on more responsibility, or becoming too visible.
“But we all make mistakes and the more you make IP visible, the more support you get and the more budget you get,” he emphasizes.
Perhaps the most exciting part about elevating the IP unit’s visibility is proving that IP is innovation – and not just a bunch of lawyers filing something no one understands, according to Mr. Dietrich. “Now people understand that IP is not a legal question, but a business model question – and it’s at the heart of our business.”
Career highlights
Previously, Mr. Dietrich was a senior vice president of licensing and director of strategy and development at France Brevets (a sovereign patent fund that closed down in November 2022) from 2012 to 2019, as well as senior counsel, IP enforcement at Apple for a year prior, and director of IP and senior counsel at Schneider Electric from 2009 to 2011. His expansive career also included a stint as General Counsel at LiMo Foundation (now Tizen Association) between 2008 and 2009, EMEA Chief IP Counsel at Intel Corporation from 2005 to 2008, Head of IP & Technology at Orange from 1999 to 2005, and Patent & Trademark legal counsel at GEFIB patent law firm from 1997 to 1999.
Mr. Dietrich reveals three major career highlights:
- His time at Intel: here, Mr. Dietrich learned how to become a team player. While in Europe, he notes that lawyers are encouraged to take on cases individually, at Intel, there was a strong team culture. One of the “stupidest” decisions he says he made was leaving.
- France Brevets, specifically creating its near field communication (NFC) licensing program: there, he was recruited as an investment director, and put in charge of the entire NFC patent licensing program, which he says was “extremely rewarding”. Following four years of “working like hell”, his program managed to go from zero to striking license deals with Samsung, Sony, LG, Canon, and HTC – some of which followed litigation in Germany and the U.S., too.
- Winning best manager award: at Atos, roughly three years ago, his team spontaneously granted him such an award during a team dinner, unexpected and unsolicited.
Mr. Dietrich notes management was particularly hard going into Covid but somehow, in hindsight, has brought the team closer together. Before the pandemic, the team was mainly based in the HQ in Bezons, France, with a few scattered elsewhere. Now, everyone works remotely, and the team gets together monthly to play games online, strengthening their bond.
A few other tips he shares for effective team leadership include being “exemplary” – not asking someone to do something you are not prepared to do yourself – being “proud”, and helping your team grow through new opportunities.
Trade secrets
Mr. Dietrich believes trade secrets play a significant role in a company’s overall IP strategy.
“When you license patents from patentees, these do not make your products better – they just make the threat of litigation go away,” he says. “But when you add trade secrets, tech, and software to your portfolio, then suddenly you are talking value.”
However, there are many downsides to relying on trade secrets too much, he warns, including the way LinkedIn can now be used to track down the movement of employees.
Today, Atos’s biggest concern is other employees coming to it with information, which could expose the company. “It’s becoming more and more dangerous and tricky to handle,” he says. To avoid this, the business has started explaining to new recruits:
“We are not recruiting you to bring in past employee data or knowledge.”
Sometimes, patents are more reliable from a business negotiation perspective, as half of them can be invalidated in court, and there is always room to argue why a patent has or hasn’t been infringed, he says. But, with trade secrets, you cannot know until the end of discovery whether someone has made a mistake, Mr. Dietrich says.