The AI Patent Boom & How It's Impacting the Scope of Eligibility

Siraj Husain is a partner in Sheppard Mullin’s Silicon Valley office. He focuses his practice on intellectual property and patent strategy in various technical areas with expertise in software and artificial intelligence technologies. With over a decade of experience, Siraj helps clients, large and small, build and manage valuable patent portfolios in the United States and abroad. He also employs data analytics to help clients achieve their patent objectives in a timely and cost-effective manner. Clients regularly call on Siraj to handle their most complex cases due to his strong technical background in computer science and practical experience as a software developer and system administrator. In addition to patent portfolio development, Siraj also advises industry-leading clients in domestic and international business transactions involving intellectual property and technology rights, acquiring and licensing intellectual property, developing and executing strategies with respect to third-party patent assets, pre- and post-grant proceedings at the Patent Office, and other strategic initiatives.

Siraj is devoted to community service and pro bono. He currently serves as Board Member and Pro Bono Committee Co-Chair for the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California. In his role, Siraj helps manage several legal clinics that provide pro bono services to low-income communities. He is also a member of the Legal Advisory Committee for the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL), an organization focused on empowering youth from diverse backgrounds to succeed academically and professionally through debate.

Kirupa Pushparaj is the director of intellectual property at Square, Inc, where he leads a team that is responsible for all aspects of Square’s intellectual property globally. He protects Square’s innovation and rights by managing its patent and trademark portfolios and is responsible for all IP disputes and claims, covering patents, domains, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Before Square, he was IP counsel for Lab126 – the digital technology arm of Amazon.com – and was at Perkins Coie LLP before that. Before practicing law, he was a senior design engineer at Intel Corp, where he worked on semiconductor circuits and process technology.

Kirupa enjoys teaching patent law and has been an adjunct professor for over six years at various California universities, including Stanford, the University of the Pacific, and the University of California, Davis. He was selected as a Northern California Rising Star in 2011 and 2012 by Super Lawyers, as Corporate IP Counsel of the Year by the San Francisco Business Times, named to the World's leading IP strategists by IAM, and has received multiple Wiley W Manuel awards for his pro bono services. He also serves on the boards of the Silicon Valley IP Law Association and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association (Silicon Valley).

Gregory Discher's practice focuses on inter partes and ex parte post grant trials and proceedings, and complex patent prosecution before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and patent infringement, invalidity, freedom-to-operate, and due diligence investigations and opinions. Mr. Discher provides strategic advice to clients in connection with developing, obtaining, protecting, managing, and enforcing intellectual property rights in accordance with business objectives, and has represented clients in United States District Courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Mr. Discher’s extensive experience in Inter Partes Review (IPR) trials includes having served as counsel for over forty post grant matters, representing both petitioners and patent owners through oral argument. Mr. Discher has also successfully represented clients in ex parte and inter partes reexamination proceedings, and patent reissue proceedings.

Mr. Discher’s technical background and experience encompasses a variety of Internet, telecommunications, networking, and messaging technologies and protocols, software and software-related inventions, semiconductor device and fabrication technologies, display technologies, electronics, electronic commerce, and mechanical technologies.

Barry is Co-chair of the firm's Patent Prosecution Practice and a shareholder in the Intellectual Property & Technology Practice. Barry has more than twenty years of legal experience in intellectual property law, including multidisciplinary litigation experience. He has helped companies of all sizes build and manage significant patent portfolios, develop in-house procedures and formulate intellectual property strategies. He positions clients to gain a competitive advantage by identifying patentable subject matter and drafting claims in such a way that infringement becomes possible to prove. Barry has wide-ranging experience in business methodology, a rapidly emerging area of intellectual property, and has provided counsel to some of the world's most innovative corporations. These include a pre-eminent financial services organization, leading financial trading organizations, numerous leading health organizations, search engine organizations, media companies and other financial institutions. He lectures widely on business methods patents.