Welcome to Voice of IP

The future of Clause 8 and a newsletter about IP news that matters

Hello Early Clause 8 Subscribers,

If you’re receiving this email, you likely subscribed to get Clause 8 updates back when I first launched the show and had a stand-alone website.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Clause 8 since then. If not, I hope this newsletter entices you to check it out again and share this free newsletter with others.

I started Clause 8 to share conversations with the most interesting people in the IP field. I am now writing this more than 50 episodes and almost 50,000 downloads later.

I’m incredibly grateful to all the Clause 8 guests for letting me share their stories, including corporate IP leaders, federal circuit and district court judges, current and former USPTO directors (including Director Kathi Vidal before and after she assumed that role), lawmakers, DoJ and USPTO officials, great American innovators, top patent dealmakers, legendary IP attorneys, creators of incredibly successful business models based on obtaining and invalidating patents, those who work hard to shape the future of IP, and those who shape how the IP community thinks about the state of IP.

More recently, I experimented with recording a solo episode about embracing AI and “an emergency pod” with return guest Gaston Kroub about Elon Musk’s threats to “strictly enforce” Twitter’s IP rights. I’ve had lots of fun, learned a lot, and had the great fortune of becoming good friends with some of my favorite guests.

My main goal with Clause 8 is to entertain while providing actionable insights about how to succeed. I love hearing stories about how that has happened, including:

• Mandy Song starting her thriving law firm more than 5 years ago after listening to my early interview with Doug Henderson;

• a practicing pharmacist sitting for the patent bar after randomly coming across Clause 8;

• an innovator discovering the key to finally successfully settling his yearslong patent litigation with a big tech company; and

• a corporate IP leader revamping his company’s global patent development strategy.

I’m starting this newsletter to try to do what I do with Clause 8 more frequently (but not too frequently!) and reach those that aren’t necessarily interested in regularly listening to podcasts about IP (yes, I know it’s hard to believe but there are people like that out there ;)). In the newsletter, I hope to:

• provide updates about and insights from new Clause 8 episodes;

• share IP news that matters.

  • I won’t be sharing daily updates about lateral moves and painfully incremental developments in ongoing litigation matters. Instead, I’ll try to zoom out and focus on news that will provide practical insights about the current and future state of IP for patent practitioners, innovators, and policy makers. I’ll also occasionally share my own thoughts about various developments and do a bit of original reporting when I think more digging will be enlightening; and

• curate original pieces from those who I think have uniquely valuable perspectives for those in the IP community.

This newsletter is definitely a work in progress. So, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, or just want to say hello, please email me at eli@VoiceOfIP.com. Also, please reach out if you have any hot tips or think you have a uniquely valuable perspective to share with Voice of IP readers.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end! If you think someone else might appreciate the chance to subscribe to this newsletter for free, please share it with them - I will be endlessly grateful.

-Eli