Carey C. Jordan, a partner at the Houston office of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease’s Houston office and a member of the technology and intellectual property group, spoke recently with Texas Lawyer about the state of intellectual property law during the COVID-19 pandemic and what we can expect once the virus is vanquished.

What’s happening in your practice area of IP law? Carey C. Jordan: My area of practice is patent law.  I also do some trademark, agreement, post-grant, and litigation work, but my primary day-to-day practice is patent procurement and portfolio management. Our business overall has remained fairly steady in this pandemic because our client base is diversified.  Our energy clients are definitely reevaluating some new filings, putting off some decisions, and evaluating their portfolios with respect to upcoming maintenance and annuity fees. They have suffered the double crunch of the pandemic recession plus the decreased demand for oil and resulting glut. We are using our proprietary software called PatentlyIntegrated to help them align abandonment decisions with their business goals so that any cuts they make do not negatively impact their business goals. Our technology clients had a pencils-down approach at first, but have now moved to a more normal type flow of new work. The factors at play there seem to be related to consumer demand as well as fear of the unknown. On the other hand, our medical device and pharma clients are increasing their new filings and have developed new COVID-19 related technologies. Perhaps surprisingly, we have also brought on several new clients, many of whom are small companies or individual inventors who have developed COVID-19 related inventions. So, we are seeing the gamut in terms of responses to this pandemic. Our firm has responded by carefully managing workflow to keep the maximum amount of people busy while maintaining efficiencies for our clients.  We have not had to do any layoffs in our group and none are planned at this time.  We continue to work from home effectively.