Good Enough Isn't Good Enough: Scott Kelly on AI and Patent Quality

In this episode of IP Innovators, host Steve Brachmann sits down with Scott Kelly, Founding Partner and Head of Practice at KellDann, to explore what happens when a patent attorney decides that "good enough" AI-drafted patents aren't good enough. Drawing on nearly 17 years in the field, including three years as a USPTO examiner and 13 years at Banner Witcoff, Scott brings a practitioner's skepticism to the AI boom reshaping his industry.

Scott walks through the founding story of KellDann, a firm he built from scratch with longtime mentor Ross Dannenberg specifically to be AI-forward from day one, and why that's proven more nimble than retrofitting AI onto an existing practice. 

But the real thread of the conversation is what he calls "AI slop": the flood of thin, LLM-generated patent applications he expects to flood the system, and why he thinks a lot of them will be vulnerable to abstract idea and written description attacks down the road.

His AI approach is to spend the time up front, often over an hour on a single disclosure call, building the roadmap himself before handing anything to the AI to execute.

👨‍💼 About the Guest: Scott Kelly is founding partner and head of practice at KellDann, an AI-forward patent firm he co-founded alongside Ross Dannenberg. A former USPTO patent examiner and 13-year veteran of Banner Witcoff, Scott has been recognized as a top PTAB attorney by Managing Intellectual Property, with a specialty practice in video games and interactive entertainment law.

🔧 Sponsored by DeepIP — your patent intelligence platform, from idea to enforcement.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Patents Matter

Steve Brachmann 0:00

Hello, I'm Steve Brachmann, and welcome to IP Innovators, where we profile the careers of leading patent professionals and explore how AI and patent technology reshape intellectual property practice. This podcast is brought to you by Deep IP, the go-to AI patent platform for demanding law firms and in-house IP teams. Fully integrated into your workflow, Deep IP is setting the standard for how patents are drafted, reviewed, and managed from idea to enforcement. Today on IP Innovators, I am joined by Scott Kelly, founding partner and head of practice for Keldan Law. Scott, thank you very much for joining us today.

Scott Kelly 0:41

Yeah, great to be here. Thanks.

Choosing Patent Law Over Coding

Steve Brachmann 0:43

So we always like to take a start by asking our guests how did you get interested in patent law? What sort of invited you to the field and told you that you needed to check it out more as a career?

Scott Kelly 0:54

Yeah, so I was uh in in college trying to figure out what I was gonna do next. I was a computer science major and gearing up, it sort of seemed like I was gonna go work at a Vanguard or something and do uh high frequency computer stock trading. Um, but I I still I wasn't sure I wanted to just be a full-time coder. And so I talked to the the dean of the um college at the time, and he introduced me to uh uh uh adjunct professor who had been teaching patent law for engineers. Um, and so I came up to DC and met with him um and and a couple of his partners, and uh, you know, not not to uh it start with the end, but uh today I'm starting a law firm with that guy. So Ross Dannenberg introduced me to the idea of patent law, gosh, nearly 16, 17 years ago, and uh and here I am today. So um yeah, I I just I knew that I liked coding, I liked science, I liked engineering. I just didn't want to be so focused on just being the guy in charge of spell check or something in Microsoft Word. I've always liked touching a lot of different things, and I really like things that are new. Um, and patent law worked for me because sort of by definition, everything you're touching is supposed to be new. Um, so that it clicked, it felt right. Um, and and so I made up my mind as a junior in college to go to law school. Um, that that said, I I worked at some startups uh before going to law school. Um, and that sort of reaffirmed I I've always had this love for the business side as well. Um, yeah, then uh in law school I tried to take every class I could that wasn't about patents because it was sort of preordained that I was going to be a patent attorney. And so I wanted to make sure I had tested everything out before then. Um, but yeah, and then uh after after law school um graduated into the 2009 legal recession, took an extra year for the 2008 recession to catch up. Um, and so I uh I had I had hoped to get a job in my uh the the firm that I just left, uh, but had taken a summer associate position in another firm and just nobody was hiring at the time. So the patent office uh became a good home for me after law school. It's not not that many, not as many people go there after law school as they do before law school, but um I was there for for just under three years uh before I joined uh my first firm where I stayed for uh 13 years.

Lessons From The USPTO Trenches

Steve Brachmann 3:26

You said earlier that you patent law gets you to put your hand on a lot of different technologies. And talking about this time at the patent office, I don't know if there were technologies while you were there that uh really kind of fired you up, got you even more interested in patent law as a career. I think we had mentioned some things that you'd done in patent examination.

Scott Kelly 3:45

Yeah, I I would say the technologies I worked with as an examiner, um each examiner is sort of compartmentalized. You you work in a specific technology area. I I was lucky that I was in document processing, which in computer speak essentially translates to anything. Everything on a computer is going to touch some sort of document or database. Um, none of the technologies were super motivating. I mean, you sort of you get 20, 30 hours total to dive through a whole case. Um and uh certainly there there were some interesting ones along the way, but I think that what how the job sort of turned me onto patent law as a career. Um, I mean, I had already knew I already knew that I wanted to do patent law, but I had thought I wanted to do patent litigation. Um, whereas in my time as a patent examiner, I I felt like I had a knack for understanding claims and sort of defining, you know, what part of this is actually patentable, where are we going? Um, some of the other examiners would make fun of me because I had a pretty high allowance rate. Um, but it was because I would proactively reach out to people and say, look, this is what I think I'm going to be able to allow. You know, can we just cut all the crap and just go straight for that? Um, but yeah, uh besides that, I think it was the practice rather than the technologies themselves. Right. Um there certainly was one interesting technology about drafting a patent itself. Um, but even then, um, that that was a patent that sort of took some of the basic techniques that were all taught and essentially automated it in in Microsoft Word, in in albeit in a novel way. Um, but but certainly that that was a that was an interesting one um to receive as somebody with a law degree in the patent office.

Steve Brachmann 5:33

And would that can I ask the general time frame of that patent application when you examined it? Because we're at a time now where we have AI tools for drafting a lot of legal documents. Uh that probably was a state of the art, but at what point in time?

Scott Kelly 5:48

Yeah, so this was uh 2013, uh maybe 2012. And so at that time, I mean, these were pretty primitive tools, especially compared to the LLMs and everything that we're seeing these days. This was a glorified word macro. Um, but it did sort of have that effect of give it a picture claim and it's gonna carve it up for you and and craft a claim set for you. So certainly it I can see how it would have been helpful at the time, but it's nothing compared to what we have today.

Steve Brachmann 6:16

So following your time as a patent examiner, you were in practice. Uh, and did were you directly from the PTO to Banner Witcoff?

Scott Kelly 6:26

Uh yeah. So I I got hired away from from Banner Witcoff by Ross Dannenberg. Uh he was he was sort of my hiring contact. Um the the the tool that my one of my colleagues at the patent office and I had been working on as sort of our side hustle startup, um, we were making a search engine for patents. It was it did natural language processing NLP. Um, and that was something that Banner Witcoff was actually going to be one of the first beta testers of that product. We had taken investment from a startup foundry, we were ready to build a business on this. Um, but but it it pivoted a few times, as these ideas often do. And one day Ross mentioned that it it was uh it was the right time to come over to the firm. And I'll always remember I got my call with a job offer hearing steel pan drums in the background because Ross was at our firm's annual retreat, and uh he he was having a better time than I was down in Florida.

Software Patents After Alice

Steve Brachmann 7:22

So during your time in practice, you've done a lot of patent work, uh everything except for U.S. district court work, and you've gotten recognized for your work as a lawyer at the P Tab, as a top IPR lawyer. During your time doing all this, uh, what have you seen in the technologies that you've been prosecuting? Uh whether your specialty area in video games or other areas where you've just seen a lot of advances over time.

Scott Kelly 7:48

Yeah, so um I think that on the prosecution side, we've seen major evolutions because uh my practice is primarily computer software. And so when I graduated law school, that that was basically the same time that the Alice versus CLS bank case was working its way through. Um, and as I started at the firm, um, one of our biggest clients was a major financial institution, and their their patents just immediately started getting rejected without even really being looked at. Um, and so we really had to change how we drafted those patents and the stories that we told to really lean in on the technologies. And at first it was this wild west. I I I also handled our um the Federal Circuit Year in Review um for the last seven or eight years. And and every year I would start with, we still don't really know, we're still figuring it out. Um, and it and it did eventually start to become more clear. But in those early days, we were we were just scrambling any way to make it sound more technical, if you were dealing with a bank or legal tech or anything like that. I think that the the really interesting part though is the evolution that came around in the last maybe five or six years, which has we've we've actually completely shifted away from some of those approaches where we used to hide from the application. If it was a bank, if this was a uh technology about processing transactions, processing payments, um, maybe seven or eight years ago you tried to hide from that because it would get you on um the examiner's abstract idea radar. But nowadays, instead, we we embrace it. We embrace the fact that this is payments, and then we use that to highlight why does this technology matter? Why did it why is it different in payments? And so I think that that's been sort of the evolution of how we tell the story in our patents. And I think that as a result, the technology that we're working with has sort of naturally evolved along the same ways in that we're really focusing on what makes us hard for a computer to do. Yeah.

Steve Brachmann 9:58

That's great. And I I love you talking about the story and your patents. Uh, you have a specialty uh in your practice area, and it's a it's a personal specialty of yours. Uh video games are a form of software that comes with story. Uh and have you seen major advances uh both in your practice area and just how you interact with video games as an industry? Because I know that's a real specialty for you.

Scott Kelly 10:27

Yeah, um, I mean, video games are they they've always been my my favorite personal hobby. Uh big interest of mine. I've been gaming since the original Nintendo. Um, and and and games are uh part of what drew me to uh to to Ross in the first place and and the law because uh he's been running the Patent Arcade blog for the last 20 odd years. Um, and I actually uh interned for it uh while I was in law school. Um patents have the the games industry has a long relationship with patents. They haven't always been the most valued form of intellectual property in for game companies. Copyrights take that by far. Um, but certainly we're seeing games these days, they're as much technology and software as they are art. And so patents are much more of an issue for a game company today, um, especially as you get bigger and you get on people's radars. Um, we don't see as many patents these days on gameplay. I think that Alice really knocked out um a lot of patents that are just strictly on the rules of the game, but certainly ways that you interact with the game, um, ways that the computer is able to uh do something that it can't do. Um, I worked with the company behind World of Warships on a patent on how they simulate ocean waves extra accurately. So we we've seen that as games get more and more complex, that naturally they're encountering these difficult technical problems that have novel and non-obvious technical solutions. Um and so it's it's been really fun to get to work with those companies to help protect that technology.

What Still Works For Game Patents

Scott Kelly 12:06

Yeah.

Steve Brachmann 12:06

So you've been building your career, you've uh worked in computer software, you've seen uh patentability issues with uh financial software, you've gotten involved with video games, and then along the way, this mentor of yours from college reconnects with you over the idea of something that turns into Kel Dan Law.

Scott Kelly 12:29

Yeah, so um I with 13 years at Banner Wickoff, it was the best training I could ever get. And I was working with with the same mentor who had gotten me to go to law school in the first place. I was I was very lucky to um be able to learn from him from from the very beginning. Um and and Ross and I had just we we worked very closely together on a lot of aspects of business development. Um we were both um sort of acting as the firm's video games practice. Um and and we had a lot of trips together and we talked a lot. He he also has a background in computer science, and we had seen what AI was doing and how it was transforming the industry, as well as how patents as a business was evolving and our prosecution clients um what they really wanted and what they needed um from their lawyers. And so we began talking about the possibilities of of what we might be able to do, how we might be able to best service that. Um, both of us have always been um startup guys at heart. We love working with startups. I had two of my own. And so the idea of what do you do as a lawyer, as an attorney, if you want to do a startup, um startup law firm um sort of came to the forefront. Uh, either that or start a group somewhere. And and initially I wanted to start a group somewhere because I I have no interest in doing the HR or the insurance or the office space and stuff. And I said that to Ross, and and he was responded with, you know, that's actually the interesting part for me now. And as soon as he said that, it was like, oh my God, I can't believe I ever thought about doing it without you. Um, and and so as soon as we decided that, it was just it was it was really exciting um to be thinking about the business we were going to build. And as people who love tech and have worked with um, you know, other people who innovate and love tech, the idea of being able to start our own law firm, build it from the ground up to be AI native, tech forward, um, and and just suited to exactly how the practice works and what our clients need, um, it was just it was too good to let go.

Launching An AI-Native Law Firm

Steve Brachmann 14:47

What can you tell us about the aspects of KellDann law that are really focused on this advent of artificial technology that we're seeing move through the legal services industry and even getting into daily practice?

Scott Kelly 14:59

Yeah, I think that some of the things that we're doing that allow us that give us an edge over some um uh other firms. I I mean, certainly just starting from the ground up and having that be the vision is a lot more nimble than trying to sort of turn your giant tanker ship and make your existing structures work within these tools. So we're able to sort of link all our systems together in the right way and build out our document management platform in a way that it uh is ready for um the different AI tools that we employ to work on it. And then I think what also helps um is like I said, Ross and I both have computer science background. Um, we've worked with uh clients who are creating the AI itself, who are applying the AI and who are using AI in their business. Um, and we're using it in our business. So we we really we we come to it from a point of understanding not just about how to use the tool, but actually how the tool works under the hood. And in fact, we launched with a third partner, Kirk Sigman, um, who's presently getting a master's in AI from Dartmouth. Um, and as part of his master's project, he's built a bunch of internal tools that um we've been able to run local LLMs and some other platforms um to automate large parts of our jobs or at least uh augment our analysis capabilities. And we make those tools available for free um for our clients on our website um as our patent agility product.

Steve Brachmann 16:36

So, as you've just described, your practice at Kel lDann Law involves uh a suite of AI applications and implementations, and you probably also look around and see what other people are doing. Do you have any input on AI implementation generally speaking, and where you might see other attorneys with implementations that cause concerns in your eyes?

Avoiding AI Overreliance In Drafting

Scott Kelly 17:03

Yeah, for sure. Uh, I mean, as much as we built KellDann to be AI native and really embrace the efficiencies of these tools, I still am spending a lot of my own time doing the job, doing the work. Um, I think that there's a significant over reliance on these tools. One of the the really core things that I always keep in mind is is what is an LLM actually trying to do? What do these tools actually do? Well, what they they they they try to create something that looks like it's supposed to. Um and I think that it can be very convincing if you're not a subject matter expert that, okay, you know, that that looks good. I I get a lot of invention disclosures from people where they think they kind of already wrote a patent application. And in a lot of settings, I think they they might have. Um, the patent business is one that it feels like it's diverging in two ways. You have the race to you've always had the race to the bottom where it's I don't really care what the patent says, I just need something. Right. And and I think LLMs are amazing for that. And and I saw some law firm advertising that one guy wrote 40 patents in a month, and that's nuts. And you know, good on them. But I would be suspicious about how many of those patents really merited being filed, um, and and really what sort of depth there was there, because I think that that's AI is great at taking your content and putting it into a form that looks like a patent application is supposed to. I don't think AI is as strong on helping you identify, you know, what are the strengths of this invention, what what are the things that really distinguish it while still hitting those other key priorities of how does this relate to our product, how does this relate to our likely competitors' products down the road? Um, you know, what is driving value for the business, um, both in terms of competitive advantage as well as optics and storytelling. So I think that there's a massive overuse of AI, over reliance on it. Um I've thought for years that one of the biggest things that the LLM boom revealed to me is for how many things good enough is is good enough. And and frankly, that's that's never really been my brand. I I I've never wanted to be the just get a patent guy. Um, I pride myself on going deeper with my clients to really understand what is this technology, why does it matter to you? Why does it matter to your customers? What's going to matter about it in five to ten years?

Steve Brachmann 19:38

And you deal a lot with patentability issues in your career. You've been recognized as a top IPR attorney by managing intellectual property. Uh we spoke a little bit about how there aren't major issues with AI at the PTAB yet, but you have seen some things coming down the road that maybe people would want to be aware of.

Scott Kelly 20:00

Oh, yeah. I I mean I think that uh the in the last four or five years, there there has been this just absolute glut of filings um that that are I had a quick idea. I threw it in an AI, AI made it look really cool, and I sent it to an attorney and we filed it. And I think that um you know each one of those applications is about as valuable as the idea that went into it in the first place. Um, I this isn't the law yet, but it it uh it seems like a good direction for it. I think that the parts, if you put in a prompt and the AI was able to spit out the rest, then I'm I I feel like everything that the AI adds is is obvious by definition. We we judge our obviousness based on what tools a person of skill in the art has available to them. And you gotta consider that the person of skill in the art now has an LLM that they can plug stuff into. Um, so I think that there's a a huge number of filings from the last five years that are just going to be really rubbish patents that that were just generated, you know, nowadays we call them AI slop, but back then they just looked really cool. Um, I think that those patents will be subject to a quite a bit of attacks um uh because a lot of them are going to get through because the patent office, I was a former examiner, so I I don't mean this as any criticism, but they don't always get it right. And that's by design. If if they spent 300 hours a case, then a patent would cost even more than it already does. Um, so yeah, I think that there's a a boom of really bad patents coming that are almost at the level of the do-it on a computer sort of patents that we saw um in the 2007 era of patent trolling and that sort of thing. Um I think a lot of them are going to be vulnerable to abstract idea attacks, uh written description attacks. Um, and and we'll see if they end up being the subject of litigation or not. Similarly, I think a lot of these auto drafted patents that people are kind of over-relying on AI to generate without really putting in that depth of strategy or content. You can bulk something up as much as you want. You're not really adding that much to it when you just add a whole bunch of LLM junk to it. That's sort of by definition within the level of ordinary skill in the art. So I question the value of adding it anyway, other than sort of checking all the boxes and making sure you're doing something that that looks like a patent application. But I still think there's going to be a big divide between the value that a a skilled practitioner with a lot of experience and judgment can add over somebody who's just cranking forms.

Steve Brachmann 22:42

Right. Right. And that that is a topic that comes up over and over again. Human judgment and a line as to when when an attorney needs to recognize that that judgment is uh required.

Scott Kelly 22:54

Yeah, I I think a lot of people see it as it's replacing the attorney or the associate when really what it's doing is it's augmenting them. Um and if if it's kind of garbage in, garbage out sort of scenario, um, or you put some good input in, you take your time up front. I mean, when I when I read about um some some firms sort of touting their numbers of patent applications they're able to crank out, I was like, takes me quite a bit longer than that to sort of put together my initial prompts because I want to make sure that I'm telling that the AI, you know, here's the technical disclosure, but here's what I think is a good direction to take this case. Here's what we're trying to get out of this, here's what a good result looks like for us, here's the things that I think are worth emphasizing. Like I really want to spell that roadmap out rather than have the AI give me the roadmap.

Steve Brachmann 23:49

So if you were talking to attorneys in the field and you were just sharing a few best practices based on your own experiences, what would you advise as far as this is the safe way to go about with your AI implementation or maybe the smart way?

Scott Kelly 24:03

Yeah, I I mean, I think that one of the lessons that I learned in undergraduate in computer science, um, to uh to always sort of plan out your code and and sort of document. Um you don't just jump right into the LLM and and sort of give it your stuff and go. Like I think it goes a long way, especially because of the how these things are programmed, how they try to spit out output that looks like it's responsive to what you gave it, then really taking the time to tell it the same way that you would tell a junior associate, here's what I want to do here, here's what I think is important, here's what really sticks with me. I think that that's that's taking that time up front is so important. Um so I wanted to jump straight in. I'd make sure that I knew what I wanted to do, and I instruct the AI to do it rather than letting it guide me there.

Steve Brachmann 25:00

How long do you spend on developing your initial prompt? Because it sounds like that's a big part of how you approach proper use of AI.

Scott Kelly 25:09

Yeah, well, it has to start on the disclosure call, working with the inventor themselves. Um, you know, we need we can never lose sight of the fact that this isn't my invention, this is this is theirs. Um, and and it is new technology, or else we're not we're not supposed to uh it's not gonna be the subject of a patent application. So I always I always tend to have pretty long calls with my inventors up front. Um I I we we go an hour, often more. And I remember I was I was talking to a colleague at a different firm one time, and they were like, Yeah, the disclosure call went 30 minutes. And I was like, Oh, okay, is that that short? And they were like, No, I couldn't believe he kept going. And it's like, well, hold on. I I want to take this time to really dive deep and and find out what um you know what matters here. And a lot of times when I get on the phone with an inventor, we start with one invention, but we discover a few more along the way. Um, and and that's a win-win for everybody. So my my process of sort of working towards that prompt, it it's starting on that call. Before I get off that call with the inventor, I want to make sure that I have an understanding of where we're going to take this case and that I've conveyed that to them and they're aligned with it. And and that ends up being what I start putting into my prompts is is this is this is what the case is about. I think a key story is this. Um, and and uh I I a lot of people are skeptical about using the LLMs to generate claims. I I don't really mind that part so much. As long as you give it the concepts that you want, you tell it what you're going for, it's great at turning it into patentees, but then I wouldn't use those claims. I I go through and I really manhandle them and and make them my own. But yeah, it it's hard to put uh a time on it, but it is a lot of mental processing and outlining and thinking to sort of build out what is the roadmap for this case gonna be before I give it to the LLM to go off and sort of generate it piece by piece.

Steve Brachmann 27:14

Do you think the state of AI in legal practice needs to advance more, or does our use as a legal profession of it need to become more um sophisticated?

Scott Kelly 27:25

Yeah, I I think having just started a firm, I mean, um, Keldan Law opened its doors on April 7th. So uh we we certainly are trying to advance the use of AI in legal practice. I I think that a year from now, uh, if you have me back, I'll be talking about how things are completely different. Um we we just finished generating our our fee schedules, um, and they're they're somewhat aligned with traditional practice because I don't think that the tools are at a point yet where they are automating all the value that somebody like me brings as a skilled practitioner. It still takes time to craft a really good office action response or write a really good patent application. Instead, what the AI is letting us do is it's letting us spend more time on the parts that matter and on the direction and the strategy. Um, but I do think that within a year, it's just gonna be a different job because the tools will be so good at turning that vision into output. And so I wouldn't be surprised if it's a completely different game a year from now, where I really am only charging for a couple of hours that I generate this roadmap, and then the the AI takes our hour-long call, and um the the roadmap that I spent two or three hours on and turns it into a patent application. And and I think that my job's going to be mostly reviewing that after. So I'm gonna have a role in the beginning and a role at the end, but in the middle, there's gonna be a lot of black box magic happening. And I and I think that it's going to I've already had conversations with with uh clients that I worked with at my prior firm that have since opted to retain Keldan. Of they're they're talking to to lawyers from other uh companies, and and everybody's wondering, you know, what are you doing to adopt these technologies? To to um because they see what happens at their business, especially when you're in software. I have a I have a close friend who mentioned that he hasn't coded in like two years at this point. And now his AI agents are even doing his pull requests and his code review. He just has to look at the output. And and he was wondering why I don't have an AI agent I can give him that will sort of search his corporate network and grab the files that I need about his inventions. And it's like, well, it's gonna be a little while before anybody trusts me to deploy my own AI agent on their sensitive corporate network. But the point was taken. It's it's that there are a lot of things that we do or that people come to us for that AI can help either as a first cut on their end or a first cut on ours. And I and I think that the businesses that realize that sooner and that give that to clients are going to be in a great position. I I'm not saying, you know, big law is dead or anything. Um, and I think there will always be room for bespoke services, but I do think that the the nimble firms that can move fast, and it helps when you're four lawyers like we are, um, we're able to meet our clients where they are. We're able to embrace the technology where it is. Uh hell, we we might change our document management system next month. And at my old firm, that would have been a five-year project, right? So um, yeah, I think that there's there's a tremendous opportunity for sort of nimble firms to embrace this technology and have it be a true force multiplier.

Gaming, Teaching, And Personal Zen

Steve Brachmann 30:59

Well, Scott, this has been great having you on the episode today. Uh, we always take some time at the end here just to talk about, you know, our personal zen outside of the law. Patent law is such an interesting place, but we do need space to breathe sometimes. Uh, where do you find that space in your own personal life, uh in other areas of career, or you know, just things that are important to you?

Scott Kelly 31:23

Yeah, well, uh, I mean, I'm I'm lucky that I get to work in video games because video games have always been my my hobby. They're my way to unwind, they're uh my preferred form of entertainment, and they've become a great way for me and my 10-year-old son to well, actually, he's 11th. His birthday was yesterday. Um we we get to play together and and experience these things together. Um, so that that's always been uh you know my my zen place. Um, there's a game I really love called Oxygen Not Included, it's a simulation game, and it's funny because in a way it's almost like systems engineering the game, which is like, okay, it's a game that's a job that doesn't sound fun, that doesn't sound relaxing, but it's a good spot. Um the way that my mind works, I like connecting a whole bunch of things and seeing what happens. And so it's it's sort of an ant farm where you set everything up and you can make these incredible machines and sort of watch what evolves. Um, so it's it's games like that that I really love. But at the same time, being able to connect with my son, um, we play a lot of Fortnite together. I never really was a big first-person shooter guy, but um being able to play with my son and the other uh his his other friends. I'm sort of the the the I don't know if I'm the cool dad or the nerd dad, uh like taking the little posse around. Um but you know it's it's it I I work in IP law and so nerds are cool again. Um and so it's it's great to be able to to share that with him, um, as well as to be able to work with people who are innovating in that space and being creative. While patents are sort of my my main practice area, um having been active in the video game law space for years, um I I've I've dealt quite a lot with copyrights and and the trademark side. Um, and I actually teach uh video game and interactive entertainment law at American University. And being a teacher is so much harder for me than being a lawyer who sort of sits here and tells clients how it is or you know solves problems. Um, teaching is just a completely different skill. But I've learned so much from teaching. I know it's cliche to say, oh, I learned more from the class than the students did, but it really helped help me understand a lot more about why we have these intellectual property laws and and why restrictions on creation, because that's what copyrights and patents are, they actually help foster new creativity. Um, I mean, we always talk in our class about how all games are built off of copying, um, because there weren't games at one point, and then there were. And then the next game, how could somebody sit down and play it if you didn't kind of make it feel a little bit like games they were used to? Um, and so finding that line between what is what is creative expression and what is sort of improper copying of somebody else's stuff, um, having those discussions in class, and then even with just people in my daily life, my son, my family, um, has helped me learn a lot more about it and helped me really appreciate the creative process a lot more. Um so uh yeah, games are my my happy place, and I'm I'm I'm I'm uh unashamed to admit that I'm a 40-year-old gamer dad.

Steve Brachmann 34:52

Uh please, I'm 39 and I'm just getting back into it because I I need more fun in my life. Right. And you actually were just in Poland for a video game industry event, if you want to talk about that, just super brief.

Scott Kelly 35:05

Yeah, that's that's right. I was at the Digital Dragons Game Developers Conference, and uh Polish law firm hosted a legal summit there. Um, it's actually the third international game law conference uh for me this year, and that's always really tied into that sort of happy place zen. Video games are maybe 10 to 15 percent of the work that we do, but they're just they're they're a fun space for me. And and uh it's it's a great place to build relationships. It's something that Ross and I have been doing from the very beginning. It's what got me into law, it's what built our connections to the community, it helped us get inspired and feel confident about launching our own thing. Um, and so it's just it's it's it's been a tremendous vehicle that's really helped me build my career and and sort of been a through line. And it got me to a point where I was able to step out with my my friend and longtime mentor and and start a business. Um, one of these things that we support so many clients in, to be able to do it um ourselves. It's it's exciting, it's definitely scary. Um, but but so far it's going great.

Steve Brachmann 36:16

Great. Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us in IP innovators today.

Scott Kelly 36:22

Yep, thanks for having me.

Steve Brachmann 36:24

Absolutely. Well, take care, everyone. And for IP innovators, I am Steve Brachmann. Happy Patenting.