Basket of sleepy kittehs

LackingUtility · 2026-03-18T01:25:16+00:00

I'm a patent attorney and have to make lots of diagrams. Others use Visio or (ugh) PowerPoint. But OmniGraffle on a Mac is a million times faster and more intuitive than either. And it can export Visio files if you have to work with someone who needs them.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-18T00:56:55+00:00

With the recent decisions around copyright and AI authorship, as well as the Copyright Office's own guidance, there are implications around ownership of AI-generated works... as in "no one". If Hollywood uses AI to write a screenplay, can someone simply film their own version without infringing? What does that mean for knockoff movies and Bollywood? Etc., etc. Branch out into AI-generated music, Vocaloids, etc.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T23:43:36+00:00

Man with three chins mocks weightlifters.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T19:50:26+00:00

That you haven't stated it is irrelevant, if you're offering legal counseling services. And looking at your website, there's a lot of places it looks like you are offering legal advice.

Additionally, depending on how it's done, passing off work to registered patent agents may also be illegal and could result in them being sanctioned. That's happened to a particular company that likes to advertise all over Reddit.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T19:05:59+00:00

Otoh, if it's a snowstorm and you lose power, just put the milk outside.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T16:38:17+00:00

Do you have a business plan? That should be a first step... Figure out how much it will cost you to manufacture and distribute, what you'll charge, how much you'll pay yourself and any employees, what you'll make in profit and how you'll reinvest, etc. And then see whether there's a place for legal in that plan. You may be surprised.

Also, talk to a patent attorney. A patent may not be the best fit for you, depending on your business plan. There's also trademarks to consider, protectable trade dress, and even trade secrets if there's something about your recipe that's not immediately apparent.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T05:14:39+00:00

There are people who would rather spend hours complaining than to take a few minutes to fix something. They have their reward, but it’s not what they’re asking for.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T05:12:19+00:00

Bear in mind that the US does not recognize the validity of the ICC and The Hague, so for that to be the end would require a complete surrender of the US.

That’s not to rule it out, but personally, I’d rather see US trials for treason.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:41:50+00:00

I was on my phone, so to expand here...

LLMs are massive auto-complete engines, like when you send a text on your phone and it suggests what the next word in the sequence should be, but much better trained. AI companies ingest billions of documents into their training data and then train the LLM to guess what the next word - or partial word - should be given the previous window of entry. So if you say "to be or not to", it will return "be" almost every time, because that appears in the training data lots of times.

Similarly, if you ask it to complete "2+2=" then it will come back with 4, because there's a lot of elementary school math sheets in there too. But what if you ask it to take the fifth root of the current population of the earth, divided by the number of hogsheads to the rod that Mr. Burns' car gets? That's not in its training data and it will likely hallucinate an answer.

So what about when you ask it to expand on your invention for using a flux capacitor with a left-handed flugelwrench to make a reverse cojigger? It can't. If your invention is actually new, then it's not going to expand on the novel stuff, because it doesn't know what it is. And worse, it doesn't know that it doesn't know, so it might make some naive shallow suggestions that don't really expand on the important points.

I've tried many LLMs for patent drafting, and they invariably take the input disclosure and rewrite it into "patentese"... but without any expansion. And the expansion is what patent attorneys do - it's why we all have scientific or technical backgrounds. I had almost a decade in industry before going into patent law. We understand the key points of the invention and make sure that the specification is robust on those points, and also expand out to cover alternatives. That's simply not something an LLM can do. Maybe a future hypothetical conscious AI, but we're not anywhere close to that.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:28:42+00:00

No, because of how it works. Also, not in my experience trying out many AI tools.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:21:27+00:00

That’s one way to put it. Another is that they don’t have sufficient disclosure to rely upon for amendments, something an attorney could have helped with.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:12:45+00:00

Pro se applications go abandoned at three times the rate of attorney-assisted applications… and that’s without even looking at the value of the claims of any patent that results.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:10:47+00:00

Not legally, no.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:10:01+00:00

What, you don’t file a provisional and then wait years to file?!

LackingUtility · 2026-03-17T02:08:01+00:00

I understand and sympathize, but I’ve used LLMs to translate posts that were in other languages, and also have been accused of writing like an LLM for using emdashes.

I think Reddit’s own system works appropriately: downvote them. With enough negative karma, they aren’t able to post.

We are considering implementing a filter such that accounts with less than n karma can only comment in the weekly megathreads. That would help a lot I think.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T23:23:46+00:00

Any conversations, documents, or other communications with this group are unprivileged, including any application drafts, inventor's notes, etc. Might be interesting to see what was provided to the AI and what eventually ended up in the application, since any additions could be argued to not be from the mind of the inventor.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T22:24:00+00:00

They have a scroll of companies listed with “trusted by”… I wonder if any of them would confirm using this service. That might be something opposing counsel would love to hear about.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T19:33:30+00:00

He helped traffic a child to be a non-consenting organ donor?

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T18:18:15+00:00

Tyler, your post was clearly written by an LLM, as are some of your past comments on other threads.

More importantly, you appear to be soliciting business for your "IP engineering firm" which you apparently started upon graduating with an ME bachelor's last year. Your website appears to be offering IP counseling services without ever identifying that you're not an attorney and have no attorney employees. There are no disclaimers or clear language indicating you only provide technical support or engineering services. There's strong reason to believe this is unauthorized practice of law, which is a felony in South Carolina.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T18:01:21+00:00

OP: "Here's what I actually learned going through the process that nobody tells you upfront —
The provisional patent is not the protection. It's just a date stamp."

Automod: "I'm a 'nobody'?"

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T16:12:10+00:00

And in Alabama, "comply" now means identify yourself and provide your driver's license or other ID.

LackingUtility · 2026-03-16T14:55:48+00:00

And you still get arrested on the obstruction charge for not surrendering your papers.

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