Patsnap’s Matt Veale on AI and the Future of Intellectual Property Law

Hello, Legal Helm listeners!

Today, we’re excited to have Matt Veale join us—an experienced European Patent Attorney and UPC Representative at Patsnap. With a PhD and a background in computer science, Matt offers a unique perspective on the intersection of technology and intellectual property. At Patsnap, he helps businesses harness patent intelligence and AI-powered insights to shape successful IP and R&D strategies.

In this episode, we’ll explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping IP law, the challenges, and opportunities it brings, and its impact on the daily work of IP professionals. We’ll also take a closer look at Patsnap’s cutting-edge AI solutions and how they are driving innovation in the field. Stay with us for an engaging and insightful conversation!

Your Host

Bim Dave is Helm360’s CEO. With 20+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.

Our Guest

Matt Veale is a European Patent Attorney and the current lead patent lawyer at Patsnap. With a PhD and a background in computer science, he specializes in intellectual property strategies for software, bridging the gap between technology and IP. At Patsnap, Matt works to unlock detailed insights, helping to plan and create profitable IP and R&D strategies based on patent data – allowing organizations to drive innovation, optimize research, and enhance development strategies.

Transcript

Bim Dave: Hello everyone and welcome back to The Legal Helm where we dive into the latest trends challenges and innovations in the legal tech space. Today I’m thrilled to be joined by Matt Veale a European patent attorney and UPC representative at Patsnap. Matt is a seasoned patent attorney with a PhD and a background in computer science making him uniquely positioned to navigate the evolving intersection of technology and intellectual IP At Patsnap, he helps organizations unlock detailed insights and patent data to craft profitable IP and R&D strategies. In this episode we’ll be exploring AI’s growing role in IP law how it’s changing the way IP professionals work the challenges it presents and the opportunities it creates.

Matthew Veale: Thank you Bim nice to be here.

Bim Dave: So maybe we could just start with a little background. Um you have an interesting background uh as I just mentioned with the computer science and the legal uh part of it. Maybe you could just walk us through a little a bit of how the journey led you to Patsnap.

Matthew Veale: Yeah, absolutely. So, the funny answer is that I need to make some money after spending a lot of time in university but uh the truth of it is I started doing a computer science degree. I’ve always had an interest in computers. I’ve always had an interest in in the law. Um I did computer science degree and I really enjoyed that being hands on.

Coding and programming and you know even the practical and uh physical side of it as well. Setting up networks physically. So that was all good and interesting, but I also wanted to do law. So, I say about doing a law degree as well. Um and then I thought at the end of that I better combine the two and do something.

So, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And I saw an advert to. Become a patent examiner. I thought if it’s good enough for Albert Einstein it’s good enough for me and it’s a great way to get into the industry. And so, I started as a patent examiner. I was there for two years working on various different industries and then I jumped ship and went gamekeeper turned poacher as you will and there became an actual attorney.

So, um That’s how I led me to Patsnap where I was in my private practice using the tools that Patsnap delivered to really go beyond just drafting and filing prosecuting applications to actually giving data driven insights and decision making to portfolio management and innovation strategies et cetera.

So, I went to went to the people that did it the best which is Patsnap.

Bim Dave: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. A lot a lot of studying um but sounds like it was all relevant to get you to the destination that you’re at. So, um I wanted to kind of dive into some of the some of the things that we’re seeing in terms of AI transforming many industries but obviously legal being one of them.

What are you seeing in terms of how it’s reshaping the world of patents?

Matthew Veale: Yeah. So, AI is having a massive transformative impact on virtually every uh profession and every industry. If you don’t know what it can do yet it’s you haven’t scratched the surface. It will be there, and it will be doing something generally. It takes out what is routine what is route and makes it more much more efficient.

So, there are studies in various different industries about how AI And AI agent is improving the workflow. You’ve got the large consultancies now which they now say don’t speak to a colleague speak to our AI agent first you’ve got um R& D engineers who are probably 50 percent more effective at finding new patents when they are innovating using AI based tool. So yeah, from whichever area you look at IP whether it’s patents and AI is going to have some transformative impact. Anywhere along that workflow whether it’s from the R& D engineers innovating and using AI to help them generate ideas not spark the inventive concept which is a separate legal matter um all the way through to attorneys that are using AI to help them draft.

So, taking what would have been a laborious task of writing out patent specifications and then speeding that forward by using generative AI to Craft those um disclosures.

Bim Dave: Yeah, no it’s really having a big impact by the sounds of it. Um what are you seeing in terms of some of the so having practiced and seeing it from that side presumably there’s common challenges that that you were facing pre uh Patsnap right? Um it would be great to just kind of here some of the challenges that some IP professionals and patent attorneys are facing right now.

Matthew Veale: Yeah. So, a lot of the tasks that the attorneys don’t really like is the routine and the stuff that has to be done the boilerplate the things that aren’t added value. Now that’s where AI really takes all that those laborious tasks away. So, managing alerts and monitoring and saying when things are due and creating a document that has to have certain legal words and certain phrases.

All that gets created straight away. Snap your fingers. You don’t have to do that anymore. So, you come along as you’re as an attorney now and really your sole impact and your thought process should all be about that added value. So, I understand the legal I understand the client’s position. I understand the examiner’s objections.

Now I have to work all that together and come to the answer. So, when we used to talk about AI, we used to talk about it being really good at depth. And what that meant is it really good and expert in a specific field. And then where humans were better was breadth.

They could say well we know about this deep part, and we know about this deep part, and we know how to bridge the bridge the gaps generative AI is starting to bridge those gaps and being better but it’s not taking all our jobs yet. So, you know there’s still a position there for an attorney that knows how to communicate the point that they want to communicate the reasons why they want to communicate that point as well and then really get the best outcome for their client.

And that’s really you know that’s where the money is. And that’s where you’re earning your billable hours.

Bim Dave: Absolutely. And so Pat Patsnap has uh has developed like a few tools. It sounds like um in terms of how you’re assisting some of these people to be able to work a little smarter and faster. Could you dive into the solutions and tell me how they kind of come together as a platform to help us patent attorneys?

Matthew Veale: Yeah absolutely. So Patsnap now has the best-in-class patent data tools out there. So, depending on which aspect you look at it from whether you are an inventor really at the very forefront of innovation and design that goes into patents or you’re an attorney at the far end that needs to know all about the data that’s there and then actually take it forward to an exam to get a patent granted we’re shortening that workflow. So. For your R& D inventors we have tools like Eureka which take all that patent data, and which can be quite legalese or patentease is the word we use to describe the obfuscation of information inside patents by attorneys that are trying to craft things that get through to grant for certain reasons.

It doesn’t make it very easy and um Understandable for your general innovator. So, we take all that we give AI summaries we break down the patent into its patent DNA. So, you can see what the important bits are and bring that out. Use AI use our copilot to really help guide you through that mass of patent data to say what’s important?

What do I need? What’s out there? How can I innovate? And once you’ve got all that Because it’s all part of the Patsnap ecosystem that transfers through to your IP attorney. So, at the end of the day, you can say what’s the innovator been looking at? What’s he been doing? What have they done? And then you get the same level of information that same transparency through to your IP attorney and they go okay we’ve got all this. Then we’ll use analytics platform to see what competitors are out there. What do we need to do for freedom to operate positions? What do you need to do for patentability positions? And then also we now have tools that will be starting to draft your responses your applications. So, all that way through from innovation through to execution at the end granting a patent and then beyond monitoring the patent landscape making sure it’s commercialized et cetera going forward all of that data is in there.

It’s all in the same workflow. It’s all transparent. It’s all AI enabled. So really everyone’s coming in at that part of the workflow and saying here’s my value in as quick and as efficient. And most valuable position as you can getting all the way to the end. So, it’s all there and ready. Now we just have to start implementing it.

Bim Dave: Yeah, that’s amazing. So, a lot it sounds like a lot of the um particularly like the benefits of AI come from some of the data that you have. Um can you talk a little bit about that in terms of like how what does the process look like to make sure that the data that the AI is trained on is accurate um and cleansed to a level where you know it kind of makes sense and produces good content.

Matthew Veale: Yeah, that is fundamental. So yeah, I don’t know who coined it, but data is the new oil. And they said that and then also there’s the old adage garbage in garbage out. So, you don’t want to be the lawyer that goes in front of a judge and have made up cases because chat GPT or whatever it had hallucinated in in creating your uh your uh Your feelings for example so um you know this is where Patsnap truly is the best.

We have the best data. And so, you know we have that motive data which is. Being validated it’s being cleansed it’s being connected it’s being improved it’s had value add. And so, you know you’re not going to get it elsewhere. And therefore, when we train our LLMs or large language models or any AI that might come next, it’s going to have this core Corpus of data which is the best quality.

And therefore, you will get the best answers. And beyond that as well when you’re using these AI tools you need to think about security and transparency in it as well. And when you use past apps data it’s completely secure. We’re not trading off what you put in. We’re not trading off what comes out you know what comes in is secure.

So, no one gets to know anything about it. It’s very different to if you were to search for a patent on Google for say you know Who knows who’s looking at that. Uh

Bim Dave: Yeah, that’s very true. Um are you able to um share any customer stories that might be interesting for our audience in terms of how they’ve got benefits from um using your tools?

Matthew Veale: I can talk in in broad terms because obviously this is confidentiality and who does what and why. But um yeah from personal experience you know I benefited massively as a private practice attorney using Patsnap um you know speaking to the lawyers that might be watching this and listening is they will know what a horror show the national officers were to um search for documents even though a lot of people Patent data is publicly available when we say available it’s not really available because it’s terrible to get to.

So just having a tool that is always there and always available and very easy to access that data just makes your life fundamentally better as an as an attorney. So that’s 1 way of quality improvement. You know as I spoke earlier about um you know Certain companies now innovating with their R& D and using IP in their workflows. That’s going to benefit them no end as well because you won’t waste money filing for inventions that have already been thought of for example. So yeah, there’s Lots and lots of you know success stories out there and we can point you towards some on the website that you can definitely see.

Bim Dave: Perfect. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. Um in terms of so if I’m if I’m considering um Uh options to invest in in a product like this what does it take to get started? So, like how quickly does it does do you start to see benefit of a product like this? And is it like SaaS based? Like how you deliver the solution to to a law.

Matthew Veale: It’s SaaS based and it’s not just law firms. It’s any company that wants to use any of the tools that we’ve got. The Life Science Suite we’ve got is particularly beneficial. The data in there can’t be got anywhere else. And you know we’ve seen customers come to us and within hours say yes, we need to give it to us immediately.

How quickly can we sign and get this going? Because the data there and how it influences and changes. They’re like you know their working life is so dramatic. So, you know if you’ve got something really valuable which Patsnap is you know we’re just looking for those people and anyone that some people need coaching to say this is how it fits into workflow.

If you’ve been established for a while but a lot of the new startups, they’re hungry for data they’re hungry for good data and they just want to get going.

Bim Dave: So, you touched on this a little um in terms of some of the while AI brings like lots of opportunities and um some exciting ways to be able to be smarter and faster about how we how we execute. There are there are some common concerns, right? So, you mentioned the kind of chat GPT um experience from a legal perspective what other kind of risks and ethical challenges do you see AI presenting and how do you see that kind of shaping the future in terms of how those problems get solved?

Matthew Veale: Yeah. So, it’s quite topical at the moment because you have the national bodies of different jurisdictions whether it’s to the EPO in Europe or USPTO putting out guidance for practitioners on how they should be interacting with AI. And the simple answer is. It’s a tool and you know anyone using their tools should know exactly what it does and how it does it.

So, you know bad work person blames the tools, but great tools elevate the craft as we say. So, you know it’s here we should be using it. And those early adopters will see the benefits more than anything else. But to those issues that you mentioned so it’s security transparency. So, you know is your data secure?

Especially when we talk about patents you can’t be disclosing it because public disclosure of the invention that you want will bar you from being able to have a patent for that invention probably. Um then um that was that was security side of it. Sort of transparency as well. So, you need to know what data you’ve got how it’s been trained.

So, you can make sure you eliminate hallucinations. We’ve seen competitive products give fake patent numbers and fake patent titles because it’s not trained on the data that ours is trained on. Um you know and then the bias as well. So, if you have uh different sorts of new sources coming in then you might. Get bias in in the work as well as what you’re doing. So again, this is why it comes back to that garbage in garbage out quality data is worth its weight in gold. So, you’re If you’re going to use a tool for patents it better be trained on patent data. And that’s what Patsnap is.

Bim Dave: Is the are you seeing anything in terms of so I’m just thinking about some of the scenarios where you’ve got an improved way of being able to pay to patterns forward. Um and doing that in an accelerated fashion does that have any impact in terms of the quality of patents being filed?

Like is there a is there a risk of oversaturation of like you know lots of low-quality applications, or you know how that is impacting the kind of quality level?

Matthew Veale: Yeah. So, some thought has been given to this and what we’re thinking of is particularly in patent world you know when AI arms race in terms of who’s got the tools and who uses them first are they going to overwhelm the others? So, you know likely is that you know uh private practice attorneys will get their hands on the tools first and want to be the first to use them and get going. And then they’ll fire in lots of patent applications to the examiners and the examiners won’t have the tools to deal with the workload, but they’ll get tools as well. And it all depends on what we talk about when we in terms of AI. So, AI has been around for a long-time natural language processing semantic analysis that sort of thing as well.

But this is the generative AI is what we’re talking about now that really ramps up the speed and. Quality of these of these works. So, I think you know again when we talk about that previous question of ethical use of AI as well you know you shouldn’t just be churning out rubbish and sending it to the patent office and trying to get patents and carpet the whole area and create these thickets, but it should be used intelligently from both sides. And if this does happen then we’ll have to cross those bridges when we get to them. But um I’d like to think everyone takes a sensible approach to begin with.

Bim Dave: Yeah, let’s hope so. You um you kind of touched on this again a little a little while ago in terms of the users of your product right that it’s not just Law firms but actually really anyone um uh can u can use it. Are you able to kind of like help us understand you know what other applications are you seeing in terms of um different industries?

Uh is there is their kind of like a common user base that you’re selling to? Um any commonality there in terms of who’s using the product?

Matthew Veale: So, I think you know summing this up so it’s not just law firms you’re right. It’s any. innovator anyone that does anything with IP which tends to be just about everyone. So, if you think of your large companies, they you know the biggest ones in the world are predominantly IP heavy. Um there is the old story about Coca Cola which is if you burnt down all its assets to the ground and they had nothing left except their trademark and their recipe they’d be back tomorrow.

One of the richest companies in the world again. So, IP is Definitely important. And this goes from you know small inventors one person bonds you know 10 people in a in a shed making new inventions and they need access to data just as much as the large guys needs access to data and your IP firms that are guiding these companies need access to that data everyone needs access to data.

We talk about patent data as an alternative data source as well. So, we have an API where you can get access to our cleansed excellent data to help you train your AIs or to you know If you’re maybe a quant so from a banking perspective look at the patent data and go here are the trends and here, we’re going to get growth.

So maybe you could have spotted NVIDIA on the rise. You could have seen it coming. You could have spotted Apple when they launched the first iPhone. You would have seen from the patent filings they were thinking about this. Crazy new idea for a phone. And if you’d seen the patents you would’ve been like invest because it’s about to go to the moon. So those are the sort of trends you can pick up from patent data for you know when maybe what let’s call an adjacent field. So, anyone and everyone there’s patent data on there. And as I said before it’s not just patent data. There’s a lot of drug data in there now chemistral data pharmaceutical industry that is massive for life science area. And we blend that together with. Other business. Type of data as well that you know there’s lots of use cases that I can’t see all of them but um the data’s there and you know if you’ve got a good idea, we’ll help you achieve that.

Bim Dave: Fantastic. And as you see things evolve in the future with all the AI solutions um that are in the market how does that impact. The role of a patent attorney like over the next five to ten years in your view.

Matthew Veale: Yeah, I think I mentioned before it’s like um you have to adopt and it’s better to get started now than be behind. Um there’s just plenty of memes that go around about um teaching uh your older partners how to turn a PDF into a Word document and vice versa. It’s going to be a similar state of affairs with AI.

You need to learn how to start understanding AI’s prompt engineering really try to just help you get to where you need to go. Also understand as we’ve talked about before the transparency the security what’s underlying the tools, you’re using but the tools are there they will be used so you need to get on board and start learning them.

Bim Dave: Yes. Yeah. Get on the train and get on it fast. Um in in terms of some so one of the things that we’re seeing with there’s obviously like lots of solutions on the market um and a growing number of solutions on the market for um firms to consider and to consider where they’re going to where they’re going to invest their kind of um dollars uh in in technology.

What advice can you kind of offer for firms that are. Going through that firstly going through that selection process to go and see what’s a good fit and where they’re going to get return on investment for from a product um that that may be AI enabled. And then really the second part of that is there’s a there’s a whole change piece, right?

Like a whole change in terms of a cultural element of what happens when you invest in a technology solution that. actually, transforms the way that you work right? And how your organization works. Um what are you seeing on that front and how do your kind of advice firms that are kind of adopting technology like this to manage that change process internally?

Matthew Veale: Yeah so I think that you have to ask why and Then once you’ve asked why once ask it a few more times until you really get to the core of why you’re doing this you know why this piece of AI why this application to that that’s really need to be firming your understanding of what it’s going to do and try and see the transformation it’s going to cause. There’s no point adopting a tool and saying oh we’ll just use this and. Say people to use it because you could end up buying a tool and it’ll just sit there and won’t be used. So, you really have to weave it into your workflows. You need to know why do we need this? Data why I need the AI to help me understand the state and what’s the output going to be at the end of the day.

So, an easy example is for patent attorneys and a drafting tool is because you are going to draft patents. That’s a no brainer and you’re going to get an information disclosure. You’re going to have to put the information disclosure into an AI tool and it’s going to craft you a document that’s going to take the work that might have taken you. 10 to 40 hours down to about you know four or five hours just to edit afterwards because you can’t trust it implicitly the whole time. I wouldn’t say to do that. It’s going to be perfect straight away but it’s just going to reduce the number of extra hours you’re putting in and increase your efficiency.

That’s one really simple way of doing it from various other areas. You know whether its contract drafting you know we all know that when you come to write a new document very rarely do lawyers or anyone start from scratch. So, they’ll have written something similar like that before I’ll take it and I’ll edit it until it starts working what it’s meant to be.

So, if you train your AI tool on stuff you’ve done before and then say I need to do something similar again. It’ll be there without you having to copy and paste and tweak. So that’s it’s a learning tool. So, the more you put into it as well the more you get out.

Bim Dave: Yeah, no very good. And is there so when your um getting people started on you on your solution is there is there an element of you know Um kind of handholding getting them getting them trained to be able to kind of think differently in terms of how they operate in terms of their general workflow.

Matthew Veale: I’ve always said that if you can use Google, you can use Patsnap. So, um so it should be easy now especially when we have um as I’ve talked about copilots as well that can understand natural language commands. So, if you say summarize this pattern for me then it can do it. Um there’s that barrier to entry of having to create Boolean code for searching for example it has gone pretty much.

So, if you say I need to know all about patents in this domain you don’t need to know classification codes. You don’t need to know keywords. You just ask it, and it comes up. So, barrier to entry is a lot lower than it ever was before. But um there’s still there’s a level of skill involved at the end as well which you can get to which you know. 90 percent of the work can be done 10 percent of the time, but last 10 percent takes 90 percent of the time. And that’s because that’s you know making sure we’ve done your due diligence. And that’s whereas I’ve talked about before we haven’t lost our jobs entirely to AI yet, so you know we’re here to stay and do some of these uh really clever bits.

Bim Dave: Yes indeed. Indeed. So, what what’s next for Patsnap? What are you most excited about? What are you working on at the moment for 2025?

Matthew Veale: Patsnap uh we’re. We’ve seen the roadmap yesterday and there’s lots of exciting things coming more AI enablement more AI drafting tools that sort of stuff is coming down the pipeline more and more. I’m just excited about getting more customers working with us and seeing how they adopt the tool and how they improve things.

Because the majority of our feedback comes from our customers, and you know we’re reactive to that. And therefore, the tool is shaped by what the best and brightest of the innovation world wants. So that’s what we give them.

Bim Dave: Yeah, sounds exciting. A lot of fun stuff coming down the pipe. So, look forward to seeing those releases coming out. So, thank you Matt. I just want to move to some wrap up questions if I may. First of which being um if you could borrow Dr. Whose time machine and go back to yourself at 18 years old what advice would you give yourself?

Matthew Veale: So, I heard this question for the first time a while ago and I wasn’t really sure what I do but um I’ve thought about it since. And I think. I would if I could go back to myself, I’d say you don’t want to hear from me because whatever you’re doing, you’ll make me proud and I will have no regrets. So just keep doing it.

Bim Dave: Good advice. Good advice. Um and I’ve I always ask this question um to my guests. And I think this is this is really forming a really nice bucket list of places that I want to go and visit. But what place have you visited or want to visit that you would think is on your bucket list or um or somewhere where you think has been just an amazing place to travel to?

Matthew Veale: So, it’s my anniversary on the weekend and I got married in Barbados last year. So, I’d say go back there again. And um That would make my wife happy.

Bim Dave: Fantastic. I’ve not been to Barbados, so I’ll have to put that one on my list and congratulations.

Matthew Veale: You.

Bim Dave: Excellent. Um any closing thoughts or advice um for the legal professionals in our audience?

Matthew Veale: I think I’ve mentioned it a few times, but um AI is here to stay. So, getting in touch with us let me let me let us help you on your innovation journey and journey and make sure you’re using the right AI tools.

Bim Dave: Fantastic. Matt thank you very much. Um just before we wrap up what’s the best way for my listeners to contact you if they want to learn more about your products?

Matthew Veale: Yeah. You can either go to the Patsnap website or find me on LinkedIn.

Bim Dave: Perfect. Matt thank you very much.

Matthew Veale: Thank you. Great to be here.