Ep. 18 Why AI Still Needs Shepherds: Patent Attorney Warns Against ChatGPT For Legal Work with Austin Bonderer

What happens when lawyers start relying on AI to do their thinking for them? Austin Bonderer has spent 25 years protecting intellectual property and has seen firsthand how artificial intelligence is changing the legal landscape in ways that should concern us all. As a patent attorney who's listed on over 390 issued US patents and worked inside the US Patent and Trademark Office, Austin brings a perspective few can match on what's really at stake when experience gets replaced by algorithms. His warning about AI needing "shepherds" reveals a troubling truth about the next generation of professionals who might never develop the critical thinking skills that come from years of real-world practice.

From his journey starting with a smoke detector invention in Mississippi's sweltering heat to building a law firm that works across international borders, Austin shares the practical wisdom that only comes from decades of navigating complex patent and trademark law. You'll discover why he refuses to file patents written by ChatGPT, the strategic approach he uses to help clients protect their innovations in manufacturing centers like China and India, and the fundamental difference between patents and trademarks that every business owner needs to understand. His insights on building goodwill, the value of government experience, and why he makes his son choose practical skills over liberal arts degrees offer a roadmap for anyone serious about protecting what they've built.

Contact Mark Astor:

Website: https://mentalhealthaddictionlawfirm.com/

Phone number: 561-517-9405

Email: mark@astorsimovitchlaw.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markastor

TikTok: Mark G. Astor (@astorsimovitchlaw) | TikTok

Contact Austin Bonderer:
Website: bondererpatents.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

AI still needs what I call shepherds. People have to have the experience to look at it and say it's wrong or it's not doing it right. Or there's some poison pill in the model that keeps popping up. But that came through experience of doing it on your own, arguing, making these things work. Now, the kids under us, or the younger people, if they rely on AI, they'll never develop that experience. And say in 20 years, it really doesn't matter what's right or wrong. It don't matter what AI says because no one will be able to check it.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

It's the journey with drug and alcohol attorney Mark G. Aster. Welcome to the journey with Mark Astor. I'm your host, Mark Astor. I've spent a lot of years sitting across the table from people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives. As an attorney, an advocate, and as someone who understands that the road isn't always straight. What I've learned is that success, recovery, and growth rarely look the way we expect them to. There are detours, hard conversations, and moments that change everything. On this podcast, I talk with people who are willing to be honest about their journey, what worked, what didn't, and what they knew sooner. So today I am very excited to speak to a fellow attorney, a colleague, Austin Bonderer. Austin has a very unique law firm that deals with protecting people's intellectual property rights. And I'm going to let him explain all of that. But he has over 25 years of experience. He's listed as the attorney of record on over 390 issued U.S. patents. He's listed as a patent examiner on over 300 issued U.S. patents. He's former head of the U.S. Patent Prosecution of Nanotechnology for a company listed in the top 30 Horton Global 500 Index. And he, like me, was a government lawyer. Although he worked for the federal government, I worked for the state. He was with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for over five years. And he was a law clerk for the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeals Board. So I am very excited to have you here, Austin. It's been a little while since we talked, but thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today. Mark, thank you for having me on. Let's go back a little bit because I know you've had quite a bit of a journey. And while you have all this wonderful experience, you're also a little bit of an entrepreneur like me, right? We like to think of ourselves as entrepreneurs and business people. So tell us about where you grew up. How did you get into this area of law? Because it's a very niche area, and there's not that many lawyers that do your work. And I also know, and we'll talk about this, that you do work internationally, which is very cool. So let's start from the beginning. Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So I grew up in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. And believe it or not, it was actually that happened there that got me into the patent stuff. So in a weird way, I get people who DM me now and they're like, I want to be a patent attorney. I guess my generation of people, and probably before then, there was very few people like set out to be a patent attorney. They were most people went to engineering stuff and then eventually found their way into the law. So that's what happened with me. So for my senior thesis of school, I came up with this idea. And the reason why I came up with this idea was back in Mississippi, it's really hot in the summertime. So my dad's house almost burnt down. And I remember I was the small one. So I was the one up in the attic in the summertime helping him wire a smoke detection system. So that was a lot of fun. It was miserable. I hated. So it always stuck out in my head. And then right around when I was graduating college, I was like, hey, what if you made a smoke detector that would respond to both smoke and but also wireless signals from another smoke detector? So basically, you can mesh these things in your house without ever having to climb in an attic. So that's basically what I did my thesis on. And part of my thesis was doing the patent on it or like a provisional patent and trying to do this. Granted, I went back and read what I wrote. It's horrible, but that's why they call it a law practice, right? So the first one was really bad. But that's how I got into it. And I wanted to work at the University of Virginia's transfer center because who doesn't want to live on a college campus their whole life, right? It's Wonderland. So patent office was hiring. I started work there, went to law school at night, and boom, became a patent.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Okay, so let's back up a tiny bit because for some of the folks who are watching, they have no idea what a patent is or what a trademark is. So maybe you could explain that. Like, why do I need that? What's the purpose?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Okay, so they're two different things. So a patent is there, it's a government monopoly or the right to exclude others to make and use your invention. You progress in knowledge a certain amount, novelty and on obviousness, the government will issue a patent on it. And therefore, you are able to exclude anyone else from making this product for a limited amount of time. Now, trademarks that is there actually to protect the public. It is a way to make commerce move faster. So when you have a trademark, an identification of source of goods, I don't give people trademarks. What I help people do is federally register those tradings because as soon as you put something out in the commerce with a name or logo or something, you have a trademark. What the federal registration does is just give it more effect of the federal government behind it. And it gives you more power through the whole country to enforce your mark and make sure that no one else uses something that's confusingly similar so that when people buy your product, they know it's your product that they're buying.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Okay. Would that be something like a logo or a phrase? I know that, like on a website, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yes. So anything that's an identification of sorts of goods, you can use slogans as long as they have distinctiveness. Um, you can use the name, the logo. So it's interesting that when most people come, there's actually like three marks in one. There's a word, how the word is actually written, the font, and this kind of stuff. And then sometimes you have some kind of picture element to it, which would be the logo. So even though it's one item, there's actually like three possible registration marks in there.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

You see these car commercials, it's built for tough or BMW, the ultimate driving machine, or for sure, there is no substitute.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Yes, exactly. Because those terms have become so synonymous with those brands that if someone were to use it, it would clearly be trying to use the marketability of every company to enhance your company.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

So let's say hypothetically, I decide I'm gonna build my own car, or I'm gonna start a car company and I want to have a phrase. And instead of saying like the ultimate driving machine, I might say something like, I don't know, definitely the ultimate driving machine, even better than BMW. So I'm BMW sees this and they're like, okay, he's copying us, he's infringed on our mark. So what is the relief? In other words, what's the sort of sanction against me that BMW could seek, right? Because the whole reason to have something from Uncle Sam that says this is protected is so I can go into court, do something about it. Because I don't want somebody who's been out there for a couple hundred years or whatever it is, and that brand, that name, that trademark, the ultimate driving machine, it means something. There's value in it. They earned that right to say this is the ultimate driving machine. And now here I'm like, I know, I'll create a similar phrase and I can maybe ride their coattails. Maybe I can sell some more cars that way. What you're describing is what's called goodwill.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

So the value to the company of the name and the branding and all that stuff is the goodwill. And you would be, as a competitor, trying to use their mark or a very confusing similar mark, would harm their goodwill. So they could obviously take appropriate relief, they could get injunctive relief, make you stop using it. Those are the type of things that they could do.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

They may be able to sue me for damages or imagine, get some money out of me. Or of course, right? Maybe get a court.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Generally, what they try to do, you know how this works, they just want you to stop. But if you keep going, they will definitely sue you for damages.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Okay. So they could get a court order that says, hey, stop using it. We call it an injunction, right? And if I violate the injunction, then I guess the court could sanction me even more. If they have to take you to court for the injunction, they'll probably sue for damages as well. So I start a new business. At what point, right, would I want to start protecting my intellect, you know, my goodwill?

SPEAKER_01 8:48

There's all these different stages. If we are like two years out or a year and a half out, what we would probably do is what's called an intent to use trademark and maybe file one. And this is so you can get through the process and hopefully you get a pre-clearance. You can only register a trademark that's being used, but you can go through the whole application process called the intent to use application, because they understand that you might be rolling out millions of dollars into this budget or this goodwill that you're trying to build up on this new brand. So they have come up with this intent to use application process that basically is a pre-clearance. But until you show actual use in interstate commerce, you can't get a registered trademark. So that's one of the things that we can do. If your time crunch, then sometimes I'm saying, let's file three of them. Intent to use marks, see which ones get through. Because it takes right now about seven months before the trademark office will actually examine your application. So the reason why you want to do that pre-clearance is because you don't want to roll out a product or name and your business and stuff like that, only to have to change it later.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

So that makes sense. So I may not want to just as soon as I start my business, it may not be something I want to do, but obviously, if my business takes off and this is part of my marketing thing, that and obviously the business is starting to sell whatever it's selling, that might be a point in which time I might want to give you a call.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

It's all about your risk tolerance, right? So one of the first things I tell people is is a domain name open? Try to find that first. Basically, do a search on the trademark database at the USPTO because you don't want to get a letter. There are certain things you can do first, and then you can go and register it later if you need to. That's the difference between patents and trademarks. I actually had a client who was in business for over 75 years before they try to register their trademark. So you don't have to get a registration to have a valid trademark. One of the things that you look at, I think it's Lavino is one of them. They don't have a registered trademark. They just say TM. And that's the, hey, I'm claiming a common law trademark. Now, just because they're not registered doesn't mean that you can start a computer company called Lavino or anything similar to them. But the registration adds more value and more power to your mark.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Got it. So maybe I have this wonderful mark and I say, I'm gonna sell the business. Somebody comes along and says, I love your business, Mark. I love your business, Austin. I want to buy that law firm. I'm a lawyer, but I'd love to have your law firm as part of my little enterprise. And you have this wonderful phrase that's protected. Is there some value in that? Is it worth extra money?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Oh, yeah. That's the goodwill. It's whatever we've ascribed to. If you believe that this phrase will make you money, you're willing to pay for it. And you can assign trademarks all the time. And you often see this with old companies that may have been defunct. Like you go to Costco now and you'll find tons of things by Westinghouse. You know, Westinghouse doesn't make anything anymore, at least as far as I know. I think what it is is like people went out and now paying for the use of the name so they can ascribe some kind of quality to the brand that they're trying to sell.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Okay, that makes sense. All right, let me back up a little bit. I've talked about my beginnings. My my dad left school at 14, my mother 16. So me going to law school was a very big deal. What was it like when you grew up as a child? What were your parents like?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

My dad was a dentist, but they separated when I was young. My mom went back to school to be a teacher, and I have to tell you, there at the time it was the old school mentality. There was no doubt that I was going to go to college. I was very engineering focused, very STEM focused. So it was a good fit for me. So it was from the beginning, you're going to college. There was no doubt about it in our household for either my sister or I.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

So my dad, because even though because he was not an educated man, said, Listen, you have to have a profession. Because if you're a and he described it as a licensed professional, like a lawyer or doctor or whatever, he said you'll always make a living. Right. Because my dad had always, I mean, he built businesses. Some did well, and sometimes he just absolutely crashed and burned. And he felt it was really important. He was a he was a big believer in the American dream, which is why we came here. But he felt like if I was a licensed professional, I would I would always be able to support myself and my family as opposed to being a burden on the country. And he was a big believer in that. We don't we didn't come here to be a burden on the country, we came here to be successful and stand on our own two feet. And he really hammered that into us, especially me as the oldest child at a young age. And my dad had businesses. I was I'd go to business. I'd go to work with my dad when I was eight, nine, ten. And he insisted, even when I was in like high school, I had to have a weekend job. You're not sitting at home. You got to go get a job. And I did. In the summer, I got a job. It could be sales. One week, one summer I was a packer in a warehouse, boxing stuff up, but I worked. And I think that instilled some in important values in me, right? To work hard, take care of my family.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

So with mine, it was mainly because I was being raised by a single mom. The I always had summer jobs. She didn't really want us to work during school weeks. She's like school needs to be paramount. Then in the summertime, she was very big for me to go get technical jobs. Not really technical, but like I worked at a car garage. She wanted me to learn these skills that I would have maybe have picked up from a more involved father. So it was plumbing, digging ditches, dealing with that kind of stuff. One summer it was working at a car garage. So a lot of times it was that kind of push that she was to me. Plus, she was also like, you see how hard these people work? How backbreaking their work is? You want to go to college. So I think that was also the other push that she had. And it's interesting now that we do this. So I always had a rule with my son, he's about to probably take off for school. I'm like, if you're going to college, you have to go to college for something that's going to pay you. Like you have to gain a skill that people are willing to pay for. So he is going to go to engineering school. I am will not pay for a BA, Bachelor of Arts, has to be a Bachelor of Science. Even if he wanted to go into business, I'm like, you have to do accounting or something, not just management. It's something that has to be concrete that you can always uh make a living for. Otherwise, let's look at trade schools. That's the path I put him.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, I think that's so smart. I look back. I was a political science major because I was that was something that was interesting. But had I not gone to law school, it wasn't what the paper that hangs on my wall right now. So I agree with you. I look back and say, I wish I'd have gone to business school. Or that probably would have been my other path. Probably not an engineer. I'm never very good with numbers, but I think business school, but something that's practical that you can actually use in the real world, right? So I agree with you. I tip my hat to you for being a tough dad, because that's important, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Another thing I did with my son is very much encouraged a gap year. He really wants to go into construction management. I'm like, you still need to get your engineering degree, but why don't you work a year in construction and see if you really like it? Because you probably noticed this too. How many people did you go to law school with who got out and hated it? It was not what they thought it was going to be. It was not the life that they were looking for. And then within four years, they're not even practicing attorneys.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, I gotta tell you that is that's such a great point, Austin. I was like you, I worked for the government. I was a government prosper in the state for five years. You work for the government, and we'll talk about that in a second, but it don't pay very well. But that is a great place to cut your teeth, right? I did 200 jury trials in five years. If I'd gone to private practice, I'd be lucky to see two jury trials in five years. And the first two is I lived at home with my parents. So I was, I'm a big believer that you have to cut your teeth, right? At some point, the price it just has to be paid. And then if you develop a skill set, as a mentor of mine once told me, you develop a skill set and then you figure out how to sell it and you do it better than anybody else. And at some point, somebody will pay you to do it. So I think that is important. How'd you end up working for the government? How'd that happen?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

That was so I wanted to work at the University of Virginia's patent transfer or intellectual property transfer, I forgot what it's called. Just where they do their patents and they try to monetize this stuff. I did an internship there and I really enjoyed it. Two, who doesn't want to live in Charlottesville on a college campus the rest of their life? It's just a beautiful place. They're like, you just don't have enough experience. So when I went to the job fair, the USBTO was there. They were hiring for examiners. They also had a deal when I went there. You went there for two years, they'd pay for your law school. So I started to work at the, I went to go work at the as a patent exam because you only have to have a technical background to be a patent exam. In fact, you don't even have to go to law school to become a patent practitioner. So you can have what are called patent agents, but that's basically how it worked. I just wanted to do something. It looked really cool at the time. So I went to go work for the government. I always told people it's like grad school. Like what you did is definitely like going to grad school. You were barely making it, just like grad students, right? You're not making a lot of money. You're just making it work. But when you came out of there, you had a skill set that most people don't have. Now, lucky for me, I will say the patent office actually paid very well for a government job. It actually had the highest civilian pay scale in the federal government. And the reason being was it's a crappy job. If you're a social person or something like that, at the end of the day, what you're doing is just research. They're shoving you into a closet and telling you just to do computer work all day long. So it's actually has a lot of turning, and that's why this the pay was pretty decent. People who want to get into patents try to work at the patent office, they don't pay for law school anymore. I found that out. They paid for one semester and then they told me they ended the program. End up having to cover the rest of it. Like whilst on your deal, but they're like, too bad, so sad. But it's a great grad school. But people do government all the time. If you want to work, go work for the IRS. If you want, like you're doing. I have a buddy who just finished law school in California. He's working in a riverside, I think, county, not making a lot, but just like you, he's getting the ability to actually do jury trials. And like you said, if you work private practice, that probably would not happen.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah, when I first started my practice, all our cases get litigated. There's always some trial component to it. And I can't tell you because the first seven years, it was just me and my wife doing everything. Having that experience and being comfortable in the courtroom and being able to make decisions right there and then, you just can't replace that experience. You just can't. People like, oh, you're an attorney.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Do you ever sue anybody? And my answer is if you see me in a courtroom, bring bail money, because I'm in trouble.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

That's the type of law I yeah. So I want to know how did you go from working with the government and say, okay, it's time to do my own thing? Because that's a big step, right? People, lawyers all the time, they're hanging up the shingle. I don't think people really understand how difficult it is to start any business, especially a law firm business where it's competitive.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Yes, exactly. And it I got lucky. I came out of school, uh, law school, left the patent office, started my own firm, end up moving to California. I still had my firm on the side, but end up working for that large company and end up becoming like a contractor for them. And but still pretty much most of my work was them. I was lucky enough to be an independent contractor for them, making $1099, which meant that I could do my own thing. So I was able to build my business on the back of a basically full-time work. What I found is the hardest thing is there's something about the algorithm of how long you've been listed on Google or Yelp or this or that stuff. The longer you've been listed, eventually you'll start pulling up in the searches more. Therefore, I was lucky in the fact that I was basically being subsidized to start my own law firm. And that's how it worked for me. So how long have you had your own phone now?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Ooh, since 2005. That's a long time. We've been going 10 years, you've been going 21 years. I guess you catch enough to do. But my beard of summer is just as great as yours, my friend. It's the stress. People don't realize it's not it's not all wine and roses when you're practicing law. One of the things that I've noticed about you know lawyers that do your work and also immigration lawyers is that you guys can work across state lines, right? Because I'm limited to Florida and Massachusetts where I'm barred, but you could do stuff, you could represent a client in California or New York or anywhere else. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yes, anywhere. And yeah, of course, even foreign clients. And then I can also work. The UPL stuff amazes me sometimes. Like it's all about where you're literally sitting at your desk, right? That makes no sense to me. Right. If you're a California attorney, you should be able to, they're like, but you need to be in California. California, and then you can represent anyone from anywhere, especially with this. You're like, hey, I'm in California doing this. But if you move somewhere, then you're technically doing UPL.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Unlicensed practice of law. So you could represent any, which is great, right? Because now you have the whole country to market to, which is a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

That's why I maintained three different offices. I maintained an office in California, Florida, and in Alabama.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

So where are you based right now? Alabama. Beautiful part of the country. All right. One of the other things I noticed is it looks like you're representing some folks in China, Canada, India. Like you're doing stuff all over the world.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yes. I don't represent them there. I represent the clients here because all patents are local. There is an international system that's helpful, but at the end of the day, you have to hire local council to do your patents in those countries. And so there is a strategy that I have with my clients because the only ones that can really afford to patent everywhere are going to be your huge Fortune 500 companies who have budget stuff just massive. So when I'm dealing with small businesses or independent inventors, one of the things that I suggest, I'm like, if you want to file internationally, but can't like the European Union is such a pain. Their laws are very draconian. They don't like patents, they make it very difficult. So I'm like, why don't we just cover the manufacturing centers? And that's where India and China, and of course, they can go into Vietnam and stuff. So what I tell my clients is if you're building something, think about where it's going to be built or where your competitors would want to build it. And then you can probably secure the patent there cheaper than you could say something like the EU and say, hey, someone in Germany can make this in Germany, but you will always beat them in price because you have the manufacturing centers nailed down.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

So let's say I have some type of mark, and it's obviously it was issued by the US government, right? And now somebody in Europe opens up a law firm and they use the same thing I have, like on my website, we have We Save Families, right? Which was protected. Now somebody, say in England, my home country, they open up a law firm and it says the same thing, we save families. Am I able to do anything about that? Or do I need to really go to like you the EU go to, they're not part of the EU, but maybe go to England, file something there so that they don't use it somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Here's the deal you have to use it or lose it. So unless you have a presence in England, chances are you can't secure that mark there. Got it. Okay. Right. Because there's not a huge likelihood of confusion unless you're there in that country. All trademark registrations are local. You do have some of these issues of like champagne has to be made in Champagne, France, right? So you do have some of those things that transfer over. Those are some kind of official designations. I don't deal with those too much. I mean, that's a much higher pay grade than mine. But if you register in the United States and you think you're going to expand in England or these countries, you can undergo what's used the Madrid protocol, which enables us in the United States just to file it and pass it through. And oftentimes it kind of if you have the US registration and there's no issue in those countries over there, you will get the mark.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

You need to start using the mark over there as well. So if I'm not practicing in England, like you said, I don't have a claim to say, oh, you can't practice in England because I'm here in Florida. Exactly. Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Do you see any changes coming with the patent and trademark laws? Anything on the horizon?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

So this is the issue, that's all times AI. Yeah. I tell my clients, do not put your stuff in there because disclosure kills patents. And they're like, but I just put it into a computer, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, actually, you gave it to the largest database of knowledge in the world. Now, I don't know how that stuff gets pulled out, but there was a recent case, and I think it was New York federal case. Somehow they were trying to claim privilege by using AI. But the terms of the AI say, hey, we get to collect your inputs. We own it. There was no attorney client privilege. And I've been rooftop saying, do not put your patent stuff in it. What kind of stuff does it? Because I think you wanted to write your patent. I've had people come up to me and be like, I had AI write my patent. Do you want? Can you file it for me? I'm like, no, that's been that liability. You're crazy. I'll file what I write. But I've used AI enough to know that it does some things good, but I'll probably spend more time editing what it wrote than writing it myself. Because I've been doing this for 25 years.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah, it's so interesting you say that. It used to be people would go to Google, right? With even by the work we do, they go to Google that ask it a question. Then ChatGPT came along and they were asking ChatGPT, how do I draft this? or how much should this cost? And people would be calling and they'd say, Oh, I did this ChatGPT search and you should be able to do this for half the price. And I my response would be, how many cases is ChatGPT litigated like this? Did you give ChatGPT all of the facts of your case? Do you want it done right or do you want it done cheap? Because they don't, you can't have both, right? If you think ChatGPT can represent you, then knock yourself out. But like you, I got a lot of years in the game, and as my father used to say, there's no substitute for experience. I don't care how good the AI is. When AI is file as many cases as you and I have in our respective arenas, then you can tell me how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

People are like, do you think it's coming for your job? I think I'm fine, and you're fine too, because the experience, because AI still needs what I call shepherds. People have to have the experience to look at it and say it's wrong or it's not doing it right. Or there's some poison pill in the model that keeps popping up. But that came through experience of doing it on your own, arguing, making these things work. Now, the kids under us or the younger people, if they rely on AI, they'll never develop that experience and say in 20 years, it really doesn't matter what's right or wrong. It'll matter what AI says because no one will be able to check it.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah, and I tell clients this, you know, when they say, How do you think the judge will rule? And my response is, I've been in front of this judge many times, but the one thing you cannot remove from our system is what I call the human element. Two judges could look at the same case and come up with different rulings, right? Two different lawyers at the US PTO could look at a patent filing and they could come up with different rulings, right? You cannot take remove the subjective nature of what we do, right? I might look at a case one way and another lawyer looks at a case a different way. I might say to a client, I don't think you have enough evidence here, and somebody else says, Yeah, I can take this case, I'm willing to roll the dice. I'm probably more conservative on that side because I I we want to get it right for the client. And I don't believe in taking clients' money if we can't if we can't get them the result that they've asked us to get. I'd rather decline the case and let somebody else take the risk and drop the ball. We get those calls too. So I think that the one thing AI doesn't have is it doesn't have that human element. It just doesn't. You can't replace that.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Yeah, you can't. Some people would prefer that. Is that why everyone likes to do business litigation in Delaware? Because it's so predictable. But yeah, I mean, you I tell people when we're doing patents, we'll do prior art searches. And I tell them it's an art, not a science. Because even when I worked at the patent office, I was doing searches every day. If I searched something on Wednesday, the results that I pull would probably be different if I did that same search on Thursday because my paradigm is a little different. What part of the invention was I really trying to look for? And that's the human element of it.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah. Would you want to go to the doctor who's been practicing 30 years, or do you want to go to do you want to just put the information into Chat GPT and let it diagnose you? That's what we're talking about here. I think our profession is evolving when it comes to AI. I don't know where it's going to go, but we'll see. I know that there's been some issues with lawyers submitting cases and memos to judges. And it my experience with Chat GPT or any AI platform, if it doesn't know the answer, it'll make it up. And I know there's been a couple of lawyers getting into hot water where they submitted a memo and it referred to a case that didn't exist. And the AIA just made it up, and the judge called the lawyers on it, and then there was all kinds of shenanigans going on. But the weird part is the bar is pushing us to use AI.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

It's like they want us to save time for clients, and it's an unreliable tool. And I've even done this too. I've I know there's a section of the MPEP that I'm trying to find, and I'll use AI and see if it'll pop up real fast. Hey, I'm looking for this thing. Where is it? And it will be wrong. Like all it had to do is read the MPEP and then tell me where this item was because I know it's in there because I've used it so many times. I just don't remember the exact citation, and it's wrong. So I'll use two of them. Sometimes they're both wrong, sometimes they're, but I always check it. I always make sure. The MPEP is the manual patent examination procedure. So it's the Bible for patent examiners.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Got it.

unknown 31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

So you're trying to, I and it's the same with some of the statutes we're operating. Sometimes I just need that one section of the statute, and I'm trying to find it because it has tells me how to handle a specific issue is the rule. Got it. Okay. All right. So if somebody wants to talk to you about how whether or not they need to protect something or how they protect something, how do they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Lucky enough, I'm the only patent attorney with my last name. So you'd look up Bonderer and Patents or Trademarks, and my website will pop up, reviews will pop up, all that stuff. You'll be able to find me. But if you just want to go directly, it's just bondererpatents.com is the way to my web.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Yeah. And so for the folks watching, you should definitely reach out to Austin. If you've got some value in your business, if you've worked hard to build something, protect it. Don't let somebody go and steal it. Because starting a business, whether it's a law firm or a restaurant or cars, whatever it happens to be, is that takes significant energy and commitment. I know for us, I started like you from pretty much from ground zero, and we just came up to year 10 and we're finally, I feel like, starting to hit our stride. But it's a grind. I work, I was just away with my wife last week, and every day we worked for a little piece. It's just the way it is. So Austin, I appreciate you coming in and sharing some of your words of wisdom. And for folks that are watching and they want to learn more about what we do, our website is mental healthaddictionlaw firm.com. That's mental healthaddictionlaw firm.com. And if you can't find my website either, as well as finding Austin's, then just Google my name and we should pop up. And with that said, Austin, thanks for being here. I'm very grateful. I've enjoyed having you as a guest. And folks, until the next time, thanks for tuning in.