Thinking Makes It So
by Jon Burbage
Latest episode
November 11: Portia and the pound of flesh
November 11: Portia and the pound of flesh
About this podcast
Artificial intelligence patent law, from a registered patent attorney. Every Monday, the week's developments: Federal Circuit decisions, Patent Office guidance, and what the largest AI companies are filing. Every Friday, original data computed from Patent Office records. On Wednesdays, a longer episode on the Supreme Court, the inventions that changed things, and what Shakespeare can teach a lawyer. On Saturdays, one granted artificial intelligence patent, explained from what the technology does to what the patent lets its owner stop others from doing. And a short episode on each new Federal Circuit decision on artificial intelligence patents. From Jon Burbage of Burbage Law, PC, in Salt Lake City. Nothing in this podcast is legal advice.
Episodes
- November 11: Portia and the pound of flesh · 11 minA moneylender's bond allows a pound of a merchant's flesh, and a lawyer in disguise defeats it by holding the lender to the bond's exact words, and then by a second law. Jon and…
- November 9: Google's training claim for ads in chatbot answers, and OpenAI's policy lookup · 9 minGoogle's published application on training a model to fold third-party content, such as advertisements, into its answers (U.S. Pub. No. 2026/0350464, published Nov. 5, 2026), and…
- November 7: The patent behind dropout · 17 minJon and Catie walk through US Patent 9,406,017, Google's patent on dropout, a way of training a neural network by switching off part of it at random. Starting from what a neural…
- November 6: Machine learning's share of U.S. patent publications is no higher than in May · 7 minIn the 13 weeks ending November 5, 2026, 5.2% of published U.S. utility applications were in G06N, the machine-learning class, up from 4.4% in the same weeks of 2025, but no…
- November 4: The Wright patent and the aileron · 12 minThe Wright brothers' patent described twisting wings, yet a federal court held it reached Glenn Curtiss's ailerons. Jon and Catie walk through the claim, the lawsuit, and what…
- November 2: OpenAI's streaming safety check, and a UK refusal that turned on one word · 9 minOpenAI's published applications on streaming a model's output while a safety check runs behind it (Pub. Nos. 2026/0340286 and 2026/0341299); and the UK Intellectual Property…
- October 30: Four in ten big-company AI publications continue earlier applications · 7 minOver the 13 publication weeks ending October 29, 2026, 397 of the 995 AI-related U.S. applications published by eight large AI companies, about 40%, were continuations or…
- October 28: Diamond v. Diehr and the rubber press · 9 minIn 1981 the Supreme Court held, five to four, that a rubber-curing process run by a computer could be patented. Jon and Catie on Diamond v. Diehr, the two cases before it that…
- October 26: File before you publish, older patents at the Board, and China's export catalogue · 10 minOpenAI's published applications on reasoning summaries (Pub. Nos. 2026/0330193 and 2026/0330194) and Google's on generalized residual attention blocks (Pub. No. 2026/0330219)…
- October 24: The patent behind the T in GPT · 13 minJon and Catie walk through US Patent 10,452,978, Google's patent on the transformer, the design behind the T in GPT. Starting from what a neural network is, they build up to what…
- October 23: The agent applications of early 2025 publish · 7 minPatent applications with “agent” in the title from eight large AI companies went from 15 to 47 in the 13 weeks ending October 22, 2026, compared with the same weeks of 2025, and…
- October 21: The lease clause that built the Globe · 9 minIn December 1598 the Burbage brothers took apart the Theatre, London's early playhouse, and used its timber to build the Globe. Their landlord, Giles Allen, sued for years over a…
- October 19: The Board's appeal odds, invention records, and two AI filings · 7 minThe Patent Trial and Appeal Board's fiscal year 2026 appeal numbers and what they mean for artificial intelligence applications; Google v. Valtrus Innovations (Fed. Cir. Oct. 19…
