Scaling IP Benefits: Tencent, the White House, and AI

Danny Marti has navigated IP from the Obama White House to the boardrooms of some of the world's most powerful companies. As President Obama's intellectual property enforcement coordinator — the so-called "IP czar" — Danny helped shape a whole-of-government approach to IP strategy. Today, as Head of Public Affairs and Global Policy at Tencent, he oversees IP protection for the world's largest trademark filer and one of the top holders of AI patents globally.

This conversation covers Tencent's remarkable transformation of music piracy in China, how the company built Weixin's crowdsourced IP enforcement platform, and why understanding the problem before reaching for a solution is the most underrated skill in IP — or any other field.

Key Takeaways:

1. Tencent is the world's largest trademark filer, operating a truly global portfolio across dozens of countries and product categories.
2. China's music piracy rate dropped from roughly 97% to 2-3% in under a decade, driven largely by Tencent's investment in licensed streaming and aggressive enforcement.
3. The Weixin Brand Protection Platform (Weishen) allows any user — not just rights holders — to report IP infringement, crowdsourcing enforcement at scale.
4. Danny's time as IP czar centered on a whole-of-government IP strategy, coordinating more than a dozen departments, offices, and agencies.
5. Tencent holds among the largest portfolios of AI patents of any company globally and is shifting focus toward agentic AI beyond generative models.
6. Global video game development requires deep localization — culture, color, humor, and gameplay mechanics all vary significantly by region.
7. IP laws have historically proven resilient in adapting to new technologies, but the speed and scale of AI may test that resilience in new ways.
8. Existing copyright and trademark frameworks still apply meaningfully in the AI era; new regulation may be needed but isn't inevitable.
9. Danny's IP origin story began as a poetry fellow and intern at the USPTO — a reminder that IP touches creative fields from the start.
10. The core lesson Danny carries from the Situation Room: spend time understanding the full scope of a problem before proposing solutions.

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Content provided is for informational purposes only and does not represent the views of CIPU or its affiliates.

00:00 - Cold open: The Situation Room and IP
01:32 - Why Tencent isn't a US household name
05:35 - Danny's role and Tencent's IP portfolio
07:00 - Largest trademark filer in the world
08:30 - Tencent's AI patent strategy
10:55 - Copyright evolution in China
12:00 - Music piracy transformation
14:10 - Life as the Obama White House IP czar
17:59 - Whole-of-government IP strategy
21:01 - Government to global industry
22:35 - IP challenges at RELX and LexisNexis
27:21 - Protecting value-added content
28:33 - Global gaming and localization
32:33 - The Weixin Brand Protection Platform
35:07 - Why users self-report IP violations
37:51 - Agentic AI and the future of IP law
39:16 - Will AI require new regulation?
41:53 - Danny's IP origin story
44:13 - Understand the problem first

Understanding IP Matters is brought to you by the nonprofit Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU) with generous support from its partners and sponsors. The podcast provides leading innovators and experts the space to share their IP stories.

Subscribe on your platform of choice or visit understandingip.org.
To reach us: explore@understandingip.org

Transcript

[Danny Marti] (0:00 - 0:13)
We were all meeting in the Situation Room for a very serious matter that involved IP. I was shocked how, again, everyone is already talking solutions and not really trying to understand the dimensions, the scope.

[Bruce Berman] (0:14 - 1:31)
Hello, I'm Bruce Berman, host of Understanding IP Matters, the acclaimed series that provides leading innovators and experts the space to share their IP story, the good, the bad, and the incredible. Most people are unaware that Tencent is the largest public company in China. It is also one of the top 20 most valuable companies in the world and the largest video gaming company.

Tencent provides entertainment, social media, and content like movies to millions globally. The Shenzhen-based company with U.S. offices in Silicon Valley is also a global leader in AI patents. Danny Marti is head of public affairs and global policy at Tencent.

He has had a career in both public and private service dedicated to IP innovation law and policy. He served in the White House as President Obama's intellectual property enforcement coordinator. Later, he was head of global government affairs at London-based Relx Group, a provider of scientific, medical, and legal data.

Danny has served as vice chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center. Good morning, Danny. You have a busy travel schedule that takes you far and wide.

Where are you speaking from today?

[Danny Marti] (1:32 - 1:40)
Today, I'm actually speaking from my office in downtown Washington, D.C., so local for once.

[Bruce Berman] (1:40 - 1:49)
Always good to see you, Bruce. Good to see you. Where have you been the last couple of months, if I may?

Where have I not been?

[Danny Marti] (1:49 - 2:26)
Let's see. I've been to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, California, Florida, and off to Mexico in three days. So it's been quite a lot of travel in the last, let's say, five weeks.

That's a quiet month, right? Or two. It is.

But no complaints here. I think my schedule has been heavy on travel for years now. Following the pandemic, it's good to be out.

It's good to be connecting with people all over the world, across all of our markets. And it really does re-energize me.

[Bruce Berman] (2:26 - 2:41)
Sure, sure. Let's get to it. Tencent is a global leader in entertainment, including TV, sports, film, music, and video games.

Why do you think it's less well-known in the U.S. than other leading tech companies, including those in China?

[Danny Marti] (2:41 - 5:25)
Well, first, let me say that the company is, of course, very well-known in Asia, where it's based and where most of its product offerings can be found. And it is fairly well-known in the U.S. and with international groups, from the investor community to the entertainment sector. So whether it's TV, film, music, sports, video games, I think most in those industries, when they hear Tencent, know what we stand for and what we represent.

But I understand the core of your question is, why is Tencent not so much a household name in the U.S. as some of our other peers? And I think there's a few reasons for it. One, I've already alluded to, it's headquartered in Asia.

So it's kind of an east going to west. So there'll be some diminished brand awareness in these international markets. But Tencent started its internationalization journey maybe 10, 15 years ago.

So I think unlike some peers that have been at it for 30 or 40 years in this market that have built up additional brand awareness. But maybe it all comes down to that Tencent doesn't make anything. They're all digital services.

So I come from a branding background, and I know firsthand that when you sell tangible physical goods, brand awareness is usually higher. So Apple, of course, makes phones and computers. Microsoft, for the longest time, sold physical software, but they also do hardware, consoles.

Samsung does TVs, Nike does shoes, etc. So the brand awareness is always higher and we live in the digital realm. And I think one other point is that, you know, we go to market based on, for example, if you look at the video game sector, on different studios.

There isn't one studio. There are dozens and dozens of different studios working on developing, publishing different types of titles. And they go to market in their studio name.

You see a bit of this in Hollywood, right? Disney. Disney has Pixar and Lucasfilm and Searchlight.

Sony will have TriStar in Columbia. And we do the same thing. So, you know, PubGM, one of the world's most successful mobile games, will go to market under Lightspeed.

The most valuable mobile game in the history of mobile games from revenue generation is Honor of Kings. You know, that's published by Timmy. So that may be a reason why the parent name is less known to, you know, household audiences.

[Bruce Berman] (5:25 - 5:34)
Danny, as head of global public affairs, what are some of the intellectual property, IP and other matters that you deal with? What's your purview?

[Danny Marti] (5:35 - 6:31)
So I'm not trying to be cute, but it's really everything under the sun. So my team oversees public affairs and global policy for all of the world, comma, minus China, right? So China will have its own domestic team.

And my team, the global public affairs team, GPA for short, will cover the rest. So it really is anything that impacts the business, you know, any day, week, month, year. It can be heavy tax, trade, data, consumer protection, platform regulation, video game developments, entertainment space.

So all of those issues would be under our purview. On IP, because it is what I grew up doing, I started practicing IP law in 1999. So it's been, what, 20, you know, 26 plus years now.

[Bruce Berman] (6:31 - 6:35)
The first bubble you experienced, right? The internet bubble.

[Danny Marti] (6:35 - 7:54)
I did, I did. You know, I think I've always been a little too late. I wish I started a little earlier.

I started, you know, on a bubble, but, you know, I've continued to maintain kind of a core hold on big IP matters. So whether it's working with national IPO offices around the world, whether it's collaborating on, you know, best practices, whether it's working with trade associations to identify or drive forward, you know, change in the IP regime. And then it's some internal things.

At Tencent, you may be surprised to know, I was surprised when I read it, but CoreSearch last year recognized Tencent as the largest trademark filer in the world. You know, look, I thought we'd be a top 100, maybe even a top 10, but number one was surprising. But when you look at our portfolio, TV, music, you know, film, games, enterprise, fintech, social and communication, there are a lot of brands and sub-brands across the board.

And my team will work with Legal and others to not only protect our IP, but to protect our partners' IP on our platforms.

[Bruce Berman] (7:55 - 8:02)
Would you say, Danny, what percentage of those marks would you say are filed in China and which are filed elsewhere?

[Danny Marti] (8:03 - 8:29)
It's truly a global, truly global portfolio. Yes, all would be registered in China, but I don't know a country that our core brands would be skipped. The company has businesses in virtually every country around the world.

So to have that number one trademark filing status means that we are filing multiple marks in multiple classes in multiple countries.

[Bruce Berman] (8:30 - 9:01)
Tencent is among the most, has among the most Gen AI patents, I believe, if not all AI patents of any company worldwide. What is the AI strategy? I mean, it's pretty amazing.

So you have among the most AI patents, among the most trademarks or the most trademarks. It's really a pretty, pretty fascinating. And, and also it's broad.

It's not just focused in one area like brand or, or patents or AI or content. It's everything, it seems like.

[Danny Marti] (9:01 - 10:32)
Yeah. You know, so before I answer that, you know, I'd like to take the last part of that question is, you know, IP is core to Tencent's business model. It is a very IP-centric company.

And, you know, we've worked in this space obviously for many decades and we know the narratives that exist around China, but China really represents a fundamentally different environment than it did just a short time ago. And you see it at Tencent as kind of the walking proof, so to speak, as a leader in trademark filings, copyright filings, patent filings, believing in the global IP system, and frankly, needing the global IP system to remain competitive. When you look at our large platforms, Tencent Video is the leading TV and film streaming platform in Asia and fourth in the world.

Tencent Music is the largest music streaming platform in Asia. Tencent Games is the largest video game company in the world and so on and so on. So when you look at that, those are all heavily IP-centric business models.

You cannot do music, you cannot do film, you cannot do TV, you cannot do games without relying on a strong IP ecosystem in China or broader Asia as well as the rest of the world.

[Bruce Berman] (10:32 - 10:55)
What does copyright look like these days in China? In the U.S., as we know, with AI, it seems like copyrights need to be reasserted or clarified as to their certainty and who owns what. Is there similar issues in China with regard to copyrighted content or is that a different culture?

[Danny Marti] (10:55 - 14:02)
So, you know, look, I'll let the domestic professionals go into the nuances of enforcing the copyrights. You know, I think bigger picture what has been fascinating and is really one of the stories that caught my eye early on before I even joined Tencent. And I said, wow, what an interesting story.

Let me share it with you here. I don't have the dates in front of me, but I want to say it was around 12 years ago. IFP, you know, parent company to RIAA, published a report that found that music piracy in China was, I think they said 97, 98 percent.

And maybe we can agree it was 100 percent a decade plus ago. And it was around this time that Tencent started investing billions with a B into licensing the largest music catalogs in the world. Think, you know, Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony for export to China.

And I spoke to a senior executive at the company when I joined about five years ago and I said, you know, tell me that story. I've heard it from the outside. But with close to 100 percent piracy rates, you're investing billions into music when it's available for free.

And the senior executive laughed at me and said, yeah, you know, financial analysts thought we were going to lose our shirt. But we believed in having a high value, easily accessible platform. People would choose to do the right thing.

And we have said that in the United States as well, that some of the IP issues we face sometimes is friction around accessibility. It doesn't mean it's an excuse, to be clear, but it does drive piracy. So Tencent provided Tencent Music and suddenly it became quite accessible to subscribe at a low cost monthly fee or as you see global streaming business models, accept an advertising based model to stream music for low cost or for free.

And you now have 800 million fans on Tencent Music in Asia. And if he updated the report and they now say that piracy rates, I think they said they were like two to three percent. So we went from like a 97 percent piracy rate to a three percent in roughly a decade because of Tencent's investments in the space.

And I should add the company sued over 2000 entities. To say, you know, hey, we just we just negotiated that license. We know you're not paying for the same license.

And we filed suit and change the way that businesses and consumers see music. And that's you know, that's a wonderful story of the evolution of copyright in China.

[Bruce Berman] (14:02 - 14:10)
You served as the so-called IP czar in the Obama White House. What's your job there and what did you learn from that?

[Danny Marti] (14:10 - 14:18)
So, you know, maybe we'll take a step back for those that don't know what this funny sounding title is, is a so-called IP czar.

[Bruce Berman] (14:19 - 14:21)
I see you. I see you wearing a crown, but maybe I'm wrong.

[Danny Marti] (14:22 - 15:46)
Yes. Yeah. You know, gold's a gold business card.

You know, for those that are listening or watching, the U.S. has often used this czar nomenclature to show a position that sits at the White House that coordinates a whole of government response. So we would have the, you know, when there were outbreaks, you know, you would have a Zika czar or an Ebola czar to manage, again, a whole of government approach. So the Pro-IP Act of 2008, Congress created this office, placed it in the Executive Office of the President to do just that, to say, look, we have over a dozen departments, offices, and agencies, all that have IP equities.

Let's name a few. You have the Department of Homeland Security, of course, runs customs and has, you know, trade policy offices as well. Department of Commerce, obviously home to the USPTO, but also, you know, promoting U.S. trade and fair trade, where IP often becomes a core item. The State Department also has an IP office and will, at the embassy level, be working with U.S. companies, oftentimes on IP-related issues. The FDA, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and so on and so on.

[Bruce Berman] (15:46 - 15:47)
FTC, yeah.

[Danny Marti] (15:47 - 17:45)
FTC, Department of Justice, CSIPs, you know, computer crimes and IP unit. All of these, and there are dozens, do their own thing. But we never come together as a whole of U.S. government to promote a forward-looking IP strategy. So the Pro-IP Act of 2008 created the role. Victoria Espanel was the first IP czar. She's now head of, CEO of BSA.

And I was the second. So the office sits in the Executive Office of the President. President Obama, at the time, he was who nominated me, issued an executive order.

The executive order created what we affectionately called within the White House the Varsity Team, because the Pro-IP Act of 2008 created what we then called the JV Team. And what that means is the statute created a working group of Senate-confirmed individuals, so actually quite senior, Senate-confirmed individuals. But President Obama said, you know, this is all great, but everyone has their own work agendas, their own bosses.

To really put some focus on the importance of IP, I, through executive order, will create a team above the Senate-confirmed individuals that will be comprised of cabinet officials. Now, cabinet officials, because they are busy, can designate a subcabinet, usually the DepSec, to come. So that really helped me.

So I chaired the cabinet-level meeting on IP, as well as the statutory working group of Senate-confirmed individuals. And our large statutory deliverable was to deliver to the President, to Congress, once every three years, a three-year strategy on IP and IP enforcement that would bring a whole-of-government approach.

[Bruce Berman] (17:45 - 17:57)
What were the biggest enforcement issues at that time? I would imagine China might have been on that list because there was some trepidation about their growth and use of IP rights.

[Danny Marti] (17:59 - 20:38)
So, you know, it was less about a country, and we really tried to take a step back and understand what were the problems. And for those that have heard me speak before, apologies for any repetition, but, you know, I have often shared a quote that I love, which really summarized my thinking as the IP czar in driving a strategy. And the quote goes as follows.

Somebody reportedly asked Albert Einstein, what would he do if he had an hour to save the world? And he reportedly responded by saying that he would spend 59 minutes understanding the problem and one minute solving the problem. And, you know, look, a 59-to-1 ratio is absurd for anyone else.

And I'm pretty sure Albert Einstein never said that. It's one of these myths that are attributed to him. But the reason I still like the quote, because it is in a dramatic fashion, really tells us don't speed past the problem as you're trying to find solutions.

And I have seen in government and elsewhere that we might spend one minute on the problem and then 59 minutes spitballing what the solution might be. And then, by the way, Bruce, then we're shocked that our so-called solutions don't really align with the problem, doesn't fix the problem, or God forbid, makes the problem worse. So when we set forth with both the varsity and the junior team creating a three-year strategy, I really pushed the working teams to spend time focusing on individual problems.

So, look, this was 10 years or so ago. It was a shift from containerized cargo, if we're looking at kind of counterfeit illicit trade, to small parcels. And what does that mean on enforcement strategies or policies up to date?

Does CBP need modernization? Because now you're dealing with millions and millions and millions of small parcels, rather than with containerized cargo coming in by ship or rail. So we really did approach it.

And we divided into three different sections, one on physical trade, the other in kind of the digital space, and then the third chapter on the need for enhanced collaboration, info sharing, all the infrastructure items that frankly are core to success or failure.

[Bruce Berman] (20:38 - 21:00)
Has your perspective changed? I mean, you've worked for the US government, essentially the White House, a London-based company, and now a Shenzhen-based company. Has your perspective on IP rights and initiatives and priorities changed much over the last 10 years?

So I don't know if I would use the word changed.

[Danny Marti] (21:01 - 22:35)
Evolved? Yeah, look, I've continued learning, right? And I've continued learning.

Before I joined the White House, I had an international IP practice and counseling practice. So it wasn't so much apples to oranges. But I had to learn at the White House, you have the power of convening.

And that's a wonderful forcing event. In the public sector, you have less of the ability to create a forcing event. So you have to figure out what are the levers, what are the buttons that you get to press to try to make something move.

So I think being both in law, corporate, and public service, the pieces kind of come together. It's not a change. They don't work against each other.

It's just, you know, what are the spaces in between those categories that we collectively can continue to do better? So, you know, the switch from London-based Relix to Shenzhen and Hong Kong publicly traded Tencent, you know, also made me look at kind of Asia going global, rather than perhaps a lot of my background, which was West going global. And I love how that kind of complements and gives you a big picture, real world view of the issues that are important to us.

[Bruce Berman] (22:35 - 23:04)
Now, Relix, as their, I believe, own Reed Elsevier and LexisNexis, and they do scientific publishing as well. So they're really all about copyright, I would think. I mean, there may be a mix of other rights in there.

And copyright laws vary throughout the world. What were some of your challenges at Relix with regards to data and protection?

[Danny Marti] (23:05 - 23:45)
So, look, it's been a few years since I was at Relix, so I'll let the company speak for itself on kind of its overall issues and legal items. But, you know, no secret here. It's public.

I mean, we at the time at Relix did maintain leadership positions across a number of global trade associations. You know, my old boss, the chairman of Elsevier and head of corporate affairs, was the chairman of the Association of American Publishers, AAP, in Washington, D.C. So obviously a very important pro-copyright group for publishers.

[Bruce Berman] (23:46 - 23:52)
Terry, excuse me, Terry Hart, who's counseled there, is on our board, is on the CIPU board. Yeah.

[Danny Marti] (23:52 - 25:26)
I'm sorry. Yeah. And I look forward to seeing Terry in April at our conference.

So that will be good. So we've always had those roles both in the U.S. and internationally. I think some of the bigger issues, again, no surprise, they were fairly public, including with some of our government filings, is how piracy impacts the investment in high-quality content.

In the Relix days, it would be scientific journals. These are very difficult, very expensive to produce in that form. And, you know, when you publish something in The Lancet, for example, or the New England Journal of Medicine was not a Relix title, you know, you're also putting your name on it, you're convening forums, you're putting a spotlight on the research by the name of your own journal.

So when a third party and, frankly, criminal actor just pirates all of it, it does impact the investment you can make in advancing high-quality, you know, science and research. You also cut the umbilical cord, so to speak, to the journal that published it. So if there is errata, if there's a retraction, the pirated site is not going to keep the version of record updated.

So those were some of the big issues that we faced in the day.

[Bruce Berman] (25:26 - 25:49)
And I'm sure like other digital issues or products, the folks, you know, if it's, let's say it's a medical journal and there are folks out there say, well, why don't you sharing that? You should make that available to everyone, you know, and it seems sort of like with patents, you know, patents, you know, you have an invention and it's life-saving. Well, that should be everyone's.

It's not so simple when you're running a business.

[Danny Marti] (25:49 - 27:12)
It's not so simple. I mean, there are business models to make the information available. Let's look at another business line from Relix that I think we can just use, you know, to have that discussion.

We have LexisNexis. Court cases are generally public, but you have to get them. So LexisNexis used to send runners.

I don't know if they still do, whether everything is digital now, but, you know, five, six years ago, they're still sending runners to every single courthouse, state and federal around the U.S. to collect cases, digitize them, clean the data, index them, code them, you know, create summaries, be able to link to potential appeals, cases cited, hyperlinks, all of that has to be done. And of course, that's done with a value. And then, of course, you can get a subscription to license that.

If you don't want that value-added version, you can go send runners and try to catch your own. And of course, you quickly realize the value that an entity like that, you know, adds on top of what something otherwise would be public domain. And anyone else can compete with them and try to do the same business, but that's their value.

So talking about devaluing that value-add, then, you know, that product would disappear from the market, which would, of course, be a shame.

[Bruce Berman] (27:12 - 27:20)
And can that be protected under copyright or is it protected as a brand? Or how do you protect that value-added?

[Danny Marti] (27:21 - 27:59)
Yeah. I mean, look, there are copyright for a lot of the headers and summaries that are created. And you, you know, also have kind of thin copyright on the overall kind of compilation of how these things can come together and get indexed, the headers and subheaders that don't exist in the real cases but exist within the ecosystem.

There'll be those protections. And then, of course, there is kind of a database of protections. There's EULAs and other terms of service that would protect and limit the wholesale scraping and copying of this value-add.

[Bruce Berman] (27:59 - 28:33)
Getting back to Tencent for a moment, they're a major, I say, I was going to say a major name in the gaming industry. It's probably maybe the top, top name. Successful games include Honor of Kings, the world's most successful mobile game, League of Legends, Call of Duty Mobile, Clash of Clans, and Subway Surfer, among many others.

I imagine it must be difficult to create games for different international audiences, for different cultures. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not.

Maybe gamers have similar likes and dislikes. What's your experience with that?

[Danny Marti] (28:33 - 31:42)
Yeah, well, you mentioned some great titles from great studios all over the world. But yeah, creating games for international audiences is quite challenging, despite gaming being one of the most universal forms of entertainment. Let me give you one example there.

When we watch the Oscars, the Academy Awards, there's always an award for best foreign feature, right? Best foreign film. And annually, for the Game Awards, that draw audiences over 100 million people watching online, so huge, huge audiences, there is no such thing as best foreign game, because all games are international at birth.

They really have to be. If you look at the four largest video game markets in the world, China number one, US number two, Japan number three, Korea number four. So wherever you are, you have to go global.

And the cost for games keep going up and up and up. We're used to, in Hollywood speak, seeing movies that cost 100, 200 million dollars to make. The same is true for some big, so-called AAA video games.

They're very expensive to make. So you will develop them with global development teams. It is not uncommon that you might have a development team, whether it's in China or the US or Japan or Canada, but you might have sound mixing go to Singapore.

You might have lighting effects being run out of LA, and a game comes together. So great game mechanics can transcend these types of borders. But player preferences do vary from region to region.

In Asia markets, and look, this is an overstatement, but in Asian markets, whether it's Korea, Japan, China, they're very strong preference towards mobile-first experiences and strategy games. In the West, players have traditionally favored PC and console gaming, shooters, action, adventure titles. So when you're developing these games, you have to know who's going to be your core audience, your core player.

And then, Bruce, you got to go into culture, localization, language, character designs, look and feel, narrative themes. Think about it. Even colors, lucky numbers, humor in games.

That may work in the United States, but it doesn't work in Indonesia. How do you make a global game? So there is a lot of localization, customization, but ultimately, it comes down to good gameplay, good IP, and that's why you see some global hits.

I think you mentioned Clash of Clans, League of Legends, PubGM. These are global titles with huge fan bases in virtually every country.

[Bruce Berman] (31:42 - 32:32)
There's something I want to get to, which I thought was really fascinating with regard to copyright and content monitoring or content care. Tencent launched the Weishen Brand Protection Platform about 10 years ago to help facilitate anti-counterfeiting efforts by providing brand owners and platform users with an efficient process to report and remove counterfeit and infringing content. Now, this sounds more effective than the whack-a-mole system in the U.S., which everyone complains about. It doesn't really work. How did this come about, the Weishen Brand Protection System? What was the result of it?

I think there were huge, hundreds of thousands of takedowns that were user-generated, as I recall.

[Danny Marti] (32:33 - 34:59)
Yes. So I'm really proud of this innovation. I think it is a global best practice.

So a few things. In the West, in the United States, most people have heard of WeChat, right? WeChat is a communication app, might kind of look like, or people familiar with WhatsApp, you can message individually or group messages.

So that's a WeChat. In China, the product is actually called Weixin, and it has different features. It is not synonymous.

Weixin is not WeChat, and WeChat is not Weixin, notwithstanding a generalization, I think, in the media. So looking at Weixin that has over a billion users in China, impressive. Weixin has private features.

Again, think like a WhatsApp in kind of personal messaging. And they also have public features. They have mini programs.

These are third-party apps. Like when you go to the app store and you see all the apps, those apps live within the Weixin ecosystem, not outside. So Starbucks, for example, or Nike or Walmart will live within Weixin as a mini program.

You will also have official accounts. So think about Levi Strauss official presence on the Weixin billion-plus ecosystem. They'll have their own official accounts, et cetera.

So while we were enhancing IP protection across private and public features, we saw that there is a problem in the private side that we heard from brands saying, you know, bad actors can use messaging to try to sell and push illicit goods, counterfeit goods. And is there anything you could do about that? And there is not a single company in the world that has hard-coded drop-down window within a private feature where any user, not a lawyer, not a brand representative, not the brand, but any user, me or you, could drop down, see a drop-down and have IP there, click on it, and report the misuse of our private feature against our policies.

[Bruce Berman] (34:59 - 35:06)
Why do you think people report it voluntarily? Are they frustrated or they want clarity? What do you think?

[Danny Marti] (35:07 - 37:26)
Yeah, I think a little bit of the above, right? It's not just a social communication platform. It's a lifestyle in China.

Virtually everybody is on Weixin. It's where people communicate with their friends, with their family. They speak to business partners.

They make their payments. They really do everything on that type of platform. So when they see somebody violating the terms and service, trust and self-interest converge where you do see the type of reporting.

And by the way, I have done it on US platforms. I purchased something online and it turned out to be a pirated book. I bought an Ernest Hemingway book and it came to me with a very weird cover, weird paper.

And I opened it up and said, who's the publisher of this book? And it had no copyright information, no publisher information. So I knew it was an unauthorized version.

So I reported online and I got asked, am I the rights holder? I'm like, no, but I'm telling you this is an illicit product and it's still being listed, right? So we wanted to change that.

So we empowered and crowdsourced IP enforcement that any user can self-report. Now, let's be fair, non-professional IP, non-IP practitioners may misreport something. So it doesn't mean that it's 100% accurate.

However, what we've done to improve the quality, we call these leads within Weixin. To improve the quality, we now have step-by-step tutorials with pictures on what is the information, the screenshots, the user ID, everything that they should collect that we then through a portal send to the IP owner or their representative. And they get to look at it.

If they want to ignore it, they can, but we're now crowdsourcing and surfacing IP leads and the brands love it. Because now, instead of just being reactive, notice and takedown, these notice and takedowns are almost coming to them without lifting a finger.

[Bruce Berman] (37:26 - 37:51)
Do you see, Danny, AI adoption growing? Well, your audience is mostly consumer, I would guess, but even within consumers and or businesses, is AI adoption growing? It is growing, but is it growing at a pace that's expected or do you think it'll take off?

It hasn't, is yet to take off. I think it has yet to take off.

[Danny Marti] (37:51 - 39:03)
What we've seen capture our imagination and rightfully so, this is not a negative comment, has largely focused around Gen AI. Impressive what we've seen happen over the last two-ish years around Gen AI, but the truth is just generating content is interesting, but I think it is the proverbial kind of tip of the iceberg. I mean, we're just scratching the surface.

So, you had asked me a little bit earlier about kind of strategy on AI, and I may not have fully answered it. I think moving over to kind of an energetic agent-based AI is going to change the way we live and work, and that is one of the areas that I think Tencent is focusing on. Not just a large language model in and of itself, but how can AI improve businesses across all sectors on what they need to do, and that goes beyond kind of Gen AI debate that we see today.

[Bruce Berman] (39:03 - 39:16)
Do you think Gen AI requires more regulation or will require more regulation or will the marketplace address most of the IP and other issues? Look, it probably will require some regulation.

[Danny Marti] (39:16 - 40:44)
I'm a bit of mixed mind on this topic. I do think we have fairly robust laws, including IP laws, that will address some of the open questions that we have around AI, right? Every decade or so, we have technological innovation that might stress test our IP laws, and I think they have shown decade after decade to be quite robust and resilient in answering the questions.

So, I think the ambiguity that we have today on some questions doesn't mean the legal system is failing. It just means, as all things, they need to be tested through interpretation and development of case law in a thoughtful manner that can provide clarity to all stakeholders. With that said, the speed and scale of AI is something that we have never seen before in our lives.

So, I think that is the open question, is whether the legal systems can address the open questions as fast as needed, given the scale, or will regulators need to step in to provide clarity sooner than later?

[Bruce Berman] (40:45 - 41:52)
I think that's going to be the question of our time. That's well stated from my perspective. Yeah, we don't know.

It's hard to regulate what you don't know is going to happen. At the same time, you don't want to get behind the regulation or be too late on it. Okay, we're almost out of time.

So, I just need to mention to our listener watchers, you'll be speaking at the 26th IP Awareness Summit, April 23rd in Columbus. That's at the Center for Science and Industry, the Center for IP Understanding, Mike, our group, is sponsoring. The focus of your panel is copyrights and AI learning to work together.

You'll be on with Ruth Vitale, who's a former Hollywood studio head. We mentioned Terry Hart, who is a counsel at the Association of American Publishers. It's an interesting group, and I think it'll be a lot of fun and very interesting.

Before we close, what was your first awareness of IP rights, even before you went to law school? What was your first awareness of IP?

[Danny Marti] (41:53 - 42:43)
I went to Georgetown undergrad, and I had a professor, he was a Jesuit priest, who once remarked, he's like, never let truth get in the way of a good story. So, I've kept that witty quote. I'm not 100% sure whether this is true or whether I've romanticized my IP story over the decades, but the way I remember it was that I had an opportunity to intern at the PTO, then the Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks.

The position doesn't exist. They've restructured it, but for the Assistant Commissioner. I was on a partial scholarship at Georgetown for writing.

I was a Lannan fellow for poetry.

[Bruce Berman] (42:44 - 42:46)
Interesting. I didn't know that.

[Danny Marti] (42:47 - 43:58)
You know, my friends make fun of me now, but yes, I have some maybe interesting background that people don't know, but love poetry, love literature, love sculpture, for whatever it's worth. Obsessed, obsessed. If you ever read that Danny Marti has gone to jail, it's going to be for stealing, you know, breaking into a museum and stealing artwork.

That's my passion, is the arts. So, I was already gravitating towards kind of literary, but I don't know if I thought as a 18, 19-year-old, you know, maybe 20-year-old, what IP was. So, when I had the opportunity to possibly intern there, you know, I said, oh, IP.

And IP is what authors rely on. And I might be an author when I'm old. And it was love at first sight.

I interned twice at the USPTO. I went to law school. I ended up interning at Coca-Cola.

I interned at the Federal Trade Commission. I interned at the Georgia Supreme Court. And there was no pulling me back.

I wanted to go into that sector. So, it was a chance internship that married a love of mine and never looked back.

[Bruce Berman] (43:59 - 44:10)
Cool. 60 seconds. What thought would you like to leave with listeners today if they remember nothing from this?

What should they remember? I hope they remember something. They will.

[Danny Marti] (44:10 - 44:11)
This has been a lot of fun.

[Bruce Berman] (44:12 - 44:12)
Yeah.

[Danny Marti] (44:13 - 45:29)
Look, I touched upon earlier the need to really understand the problem. I think that is a life lesson that I have kept with me. It's one that I really learned at the White House.

You know, to make it even more dramatic, we were all meeting in the Situation Room for a very serious matter that involved IP that brought in all of the departments involved on a big question. And I was shocked how, again, not even five minutes into it, everyone is already talking solutions and not really trying to understand the dimensions, the scope of the problem. And I have told that to every one of my team at every role I've ever had.

We always tell people to be solution-oriented, which is correct. But that cannot be at the expense of understanding the problem. Once we sit down and understand the problem, you know, life becomes a lot more interesting.

Your work becomes a lot more interesting. And this applies to personal issues as well, not just professional. So that would be one mindset I would leave to the audience is to be more deliberate in listening and understanding.

[Bruce Berman] (45:30 - 45:56)
Great, great. Well, this has been a really fascinating conversation. I'd like to continue it.

Maybe we can pick this back up down the road. But for now, this is wonderful. And I think our audience, Understanding IP Matters, will really appreciate it.

Thank you again. I know you're busy and it was hard to get you here, even remotely, but we did. Thank you again.

[Danny Marti] (45:57 - 46:07)
Yes, it's always been nice chatting. I think we've always had a good conversation. I didn't know what it would look like once we hit record.

So hopefully it's been as interesting as always.

[Bruce Berman] (46:08 - 46:52)
Thank you. Hello, I'm Bruce Berman, the host of Understanding IP Matters, the critically acclaimed series that provides leading innovators and experts the space to share their IP story, the good, the bad, and the incredible. Understanding IP Matters is brought to you by the Nonprofit Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, with the generous support of its partners and sponsors.

Subscribe on the platform of your choice or email us at explore at understandingip.org. Content provided is for informational purposes only and does not represent the views of CIPU or its affiliates. This episode was produced for CIPU by PodSonic.

Thank you for listening.