To open this season, Clause 8 host Eli Mazour brings together three journalists who cover intellectual property for a living: Olivia Rafferty of IP Fray, Nisha Shetty of IAM, and Inbar Preiss of MLex.
Each came to the IP beat through an unconventional route — from fashion and sports reporting, from antitrust journalism, and from covering crypto and fintech policy in Brussels — and all three now report on a patent system that is increasingly global, where developments in Washington, Munich, Brussels, and London rarely stay confined to one jurisdiction.
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One theme that emerges from the conversation is remarkably similar on both sides of the Atlantic: what happens when patent litigation becomes concentrated in a small number of courts?
In Europe, Rafferty explains why such a large share of Unified Patent Court litigation has gravitated toward Germany — and why some non-German firms are pushing back. In the U.S., Shetty revisits the career of Judge Alan Albright of the Western District of Texas, whose enthusiasm for hearing patent cases drew scrutiny from DC and ultimately led to a redistribution of his docket — though her reporting suggests his reputation as reliably “pro-patent-owner” doesn’t fully hold up against the data.
On the business side, Rafferty walks through the consolidation underway in the video and audio codec patent pool market, where Access Advance’s acquisition of Via LA’s HEVC/VVC program has drawn some pushback over how licensees were informed — even as it appears to be easing a previously fragmented licensing landscape.
Preiss takes us inside Europe’s rapidly developing fight over AI and copyright, including lawsuits in German courts involving OpenAI and Suno, and a closely watched case before the EU Court of Justice involving Google’s Gemini chatbot. The discussion also raises a broader question facing policymakers: whether governments should intervene now or allow courts and private licensing markets to work out the rules.
The panel also discusses why mainstream media outlets often struggle to cover IP — sometimes amplifying stories out of proportion or missing important context around settlements — and what each journalist is watching next, from PTAB filing shifts and plant patent litigation to the continuing global tug-of-war over anti-suit injunctions.
Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction & meet the panel
00:00:56 How each journalist got into covering IP
00:07:42 The SEP regulation's rise, withdrawal, and EU court challenge
00:11:53 US patent policy shifting with each administration
00:13:40 Why most UPC cases are filed in Germany
00:17:08 The Judge Albright controversy
00:20:03 The EU's standardization regulation review
00:23:50 Patent pools consolidate: the Via and Access Advance merger
00:26:58 AI collides with copyright law
00:30:26 Why mainstream media struggles to cover IP
00:37:40 What's on the radar for next year
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