IAM1053- Founder Helps Companies Craft Their Patent Strategy

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00:26- Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:53 - Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Thomas Franklin of Triangle IP. Tom, it's great to have you on the show.

01:03 - Tom Franklin

Thank you. Great to be here.

01:05 - Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Tom so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Tom is a senior patent prosecution partner at Kilpatrick Townsend, and he is the founder and CEO at Triangle IP with two decades of experience in intellectual capital management. Over the years, Tom has worked with numerous Fortune five hundred tech companies in crafting their patent strategy and has built a deep firsthand understanding in the areas of software, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and Internet technologies. Tom has been recognized by Super Lawyers annually since twenty fourteen, is the best lawyer in America, has twenty sixteen client choice awards USA, and enlisted in IAM Strategy three hundred. Tom, it's great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

01:51 - Tom Franklin

Yeah. Excited.

01:53 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more about how you got started, and what I like to call your CEO story.

02:02 - Tom Franklin

Sure. So, you know, I started off as an engineer and then went to law school, and became a patent attorney. Every patent attorney has a technical background. And, in my practice, I represent, you know, a broad range of companies, but they tend to be either startups that really need IP advice or established companies that are trying to retool. So my forte on the legal services side has been how do you capture your innovation and protect it and rework things. Right? So I've restructured Fortune eighty companies to more efficiently capture their innovation, you know, protect against competition, hedge against competitor lawsuit. For small companies, it's all about building out that portfolio, for acquisition or to stave off competition or, for investment.

So I've really become the expert within Kilpatrick Townsend, which is one of the largest law firms in the world and one of the largest, practices in this area as the person who can come in and fix it. You know? I'm a fixer. After doing this for a very long time, what I found is there are not a lot of attorneys that will give you very practical, straight, no-nonsense advice. So I always say if you wanna see, an attorney squirm, when they give you some advice, ask them what's the likelihood that I'll get a positive outcome. Right? Because one attorney may say, I'm feeling really good about this. You know? I'm really excited. That might be a two percent chance. But, really, we are now getting into this world where we have analytics available to us.

And especially in the patent area because the United States patent office and patent offices around the world are now putting all these records out on the Internet. So, you know, we had to rely on going to a service provider like a lawyer, a wise person who would share the wisdom with you. And but often they're they're acting from their gut. Right? And they have a gut feeling. And I've seen some really, really bad advice over time as this fixture that goes in and reworks things. I'm just embarrassed sometimes, at just basic things. Like, how do you get costs under control? How do you make sure that you're protecting the most strategic innovation versus the least strategic innovation, what I find is there's a huge mismatch.

So for those clients that are lucky enough to be able to, afford to get advice from a big law firm or find me, I'm able to do that. But how do I go about replicating that and making kind of a robot that can do that for every person? So how do I democratize a really good patent prosecution strategy? And that was the genesis for Triangle IP after much frustration in that. If you can go and give, CTOs, executives, and legal departments the tools to answer those questions, like, one thing that our tool is doing in the next version is it'll tell you what's the likelihood of success from the very time that you, come up with your idea and put it into the tool. It runs through an algorithm and AI-based algorithm that is very sophisticated and gives you a simple answer.

What like what's the likelihood I'll get the patent? Because you'd be surprised. There's some technology that has a five or ten percent chance of getting through. And there is an attorney there that, you know, has a business model that favors the answer, which is I'm feeling really good about this, and I would love to work on your patent application because lawyers love, determined clients with hopeless causes. That's what keeps those law firms in business. For me, I'm more interested in the outcome of the client and them achieving what their goals are. Because I have my own business model that's irrelevant to you.

We're very busy. Thank you. What I wanna make sure of is that when my clients are successful, nothing makes me happier than to see a big success story like I've seen several times in my career with billion-dollar acquisitions of my companies as we've gone through and structured it right and had a home run. That's what I will remember, not billing an extra hour or making an extra dollar one year. It'll be those several con companies that were tremendously successful after working with me.

06:41 - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I I definitely appreciate that, and definitely, the opportunity to, to to hold on. Hold on. Once. Alright, Tom. I definitely appreciate that. I love that word and the phrase that you use kind of protecting that innovation that, you know, clients are working so hard on it. And I I feel like and you might, you know, definitely echo the same thing. Some of the lost opportunities are not knowing the decisions that you're making, and having as much information as possible. So that's why I love everything that you've been able to build with Triangle IP to take in that fixer mentality that you had into that so that you give people it sounds like a lay of the land or at least as much information as possible so that they can make very, I guess, valuable and strategic decisions about their business.

07:29 - Tom Franklin

Absolutely.Absolutely. Absolutely. And just answering those basic questions like, you know, we talked about the likelihood I'm going to be successful. How long is it gonna take? You know? How much is it gonna cost? Those are all answers that only the most sophisticated, patent attorneys can answer with any sort of accuracy. But with big data and such a large dataset and really good deep learning, we can give an answer that's far more accurate than any human could give, and we can give it instantaneously on every file that you have under management.

08:07 - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes so much sense, and I love that you've been able to kinda see that and see the opportunity for big data to basically transform, like, every industry definitely in the legal industry, and IP is no different. So I love that you've been able to kinda do that. So, I know you touched a little bit upon it. I wasn't sure if there's anything additional that you can let us know on how, you know, Triangle IP works with these clients, how it serves their clients, and what you feel maybe even sets us apart and makes it, what I like to call it secret sauce.

08:34 - Tom Franklin

Yeah. So the thing that really sets TriangleIP apart from most other tools is there are lots of tools in this industry, and they're generally all aimed at somebody like me. You know, how I can more efficiently do my job. But everybody's focusing on that market. When I sat there and thought about it, the bigger problem is not the five percent of the world that's lucky enough to be able to afford good counsel. It's really the ninety-five percent of the world. Right? It's like, what did AOL do to open up the Internet to everybody?

They made it so your grandmother for the first time could use the Internet because there were alternatives at the time, but no one could figure out how to do it. I could as an electrical engineer, and the Geek Squad could, but nobody else could use the Internet. So AOL, their genius was is they took something and opened it up to a much broader audience. And that's what we're trying to do with TriangleIP there should be no reason why somebody with an MBA or who has gone to business school can't manage, IP assets, and patent assets, just like they could manage anything else within a business.

09:43 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:54 - Tom Franklin

So one thing you know, I counsel lots of small clients, and I have lots of friends, and I've watched them be serial entrepreneurs pursuing many different problems. And one thing I found, like, everybody's looking for that next big idea, that next, big thing. Right? And I'll have I'll see these waves of entrepreneurs come through. Right? I saw, you know when Bitcoin first went through the roof, I think it was around the holidays, December of twenty eighteen. And everybody was coming to me with the blockchain innovation. Well, guess what? The companies that I've been working with for over a year or several years on blockchain technology, were the winners there.

The wave had already passed. So I think, you know, chasing the new is something you always have to resist. And what you wanna do is you wanna think about problems that are right around you, things that you're very experienced about. I had another client that, several big, content delivery hits where there's huge, made huge amounts of money, and then their next business had to do with travel. You know, I travel. You travel. We all know a little bit about travel. But guess what? They're probably much more likely to come out with some sort of breakthrough innovation with something that they're very much on the front lines, very much on the cutting edge, thinking of those cutting edge problems. So don't look far afield.

11:26 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be around, you know, intellectual capital or property, but it might be something you would tell a client or if you jump into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:42 - Tom Franklin

You know, everybody believes that there's kind of easy money out there. I want easy money. I should have bought Dodge Dodge I don't even know how to say it. I should have bought, some sort of Bitcoin or or whatever. Well, every time I hear one of those stories, I say, look. When that client shows up with the time machine, I'm gonna take a couple of rides. You'll know me as a very rich guy at that point. Then I'll call you up, and we'll go for a ride together, and we'll fix that problem. I guess my word of advice would be it's kind of just old-fashioned.

It's hard work. You know? I was up for the first call at 5 AM this morning, and I ended my last call at 11:30 last night. I've been doing that, you know, for years and years and years. And, you know, that's hard to do, and you've gotta find something you love to be able to do it. So I love the fact that I was able to work twice as much as most people were yesterday. I had twice as much fun.

12:38 - Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Tom, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:49 - Tom Franklin

I'm very much kind of a servant leader. Right? Because I feel as though I don't. I have a job, but it's really working for the shareholders. It's working for my employees. Right? And working for our customers. Because if you can, you know, service all of those constituencies, you will have amazing success, and you will be well regarded as a CEO. But focusing on being well-regarded as a CEO is the wrong focus. It's really showing up, doing your job day in and day out, leading by example, being very engaged, you know, and it's very hard work.

13:31- Gresham Harkless

Tom, truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they could get a hold of you and to find about all the awesome things you're working on.

13:46 - Tom Franklin

Great. So, you know, I'm available. We have two websites for my legal services business. It's Kilpatrick Townsend dot com, and you can find me find me there. My contact information is available. Of course, Triangle IP, you know, we'd love you to try out our product and give us any sort of feedback. We are, we've got a premium version, but we don't have the premium version running yet, so it's all free. We're adding new features and would love you to be part of that journey to really be able to understand your intellectual property, the value that it's getting you, and those answers those uncomfortable answers that you're not getting from your current counsel.

And if you're getting them, you should be suspicious. Right? You should be suspicious of any vendor that's giving you advice that it might be really their business model that they're representing and not yours. So I wanna hand that steering wheel back to the person who should be driving the ship and not your vendor, which is unfortunately where a lot of a lot of patent filers find themselves because the process is too hard to understand. So if I could make you successful on your own driving that boat, nothing would make me happier.

15:05 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Tom, truly appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes, and I love, you know, everything that you're building and growing. I think so many times, we build and want to grow really phenomenal things to have that freedom and that opportunity to have that will and drive it. And it's always, you know, frustrating when you have to give that away in so many different ways, especially related to that IP. So I love that you've been able to kinda create a better mousetrap and be able to kinda provide that for so many people to take back the wheel. So thank you so much for doing that. Appreciate your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:37 -Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.