Recently, I talked about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and how they could use a rebrand of sorts. To give you the quick version, filing for a patent or a trademark is an onerous process that wastes time, money, and energy. Nobody wants to go through the system unless they have to, and you’d better really need it.
There is a whole list of reasons why the department is the way it is, and yes, I could ramble about the many problems with government and inefficiency. But really, the issue comes down to something that a lot of other companies have in common with the USPTO: poor communication. Let me lay it out for you.
People Need to Talk
This all stems from my own frustrations with the patent system. Fortunately, I had an in: Steven Thrasher. He’s an entrepreneurial intellectual property attorney and a good buddy of mine. This man has done tons of work within the patent system over a few decades now, so he knows how it all functions, including many of its quirks and flaws. When we got into things, he explained to me how some of the issues come down to communication.
“Right now, everybody has their own silo,” Steven told me. “Bureaucrats love their own silo because that gives them control and power in that silo.”
The people who work at USPTO in one department don’t necessarily talk to those in another. Which means if I reach out to the agency to sort out something as simple as a spelling mistake, I may have to go to three different departments that give me three different answers.
Between that and the added complexity of the system in general, it seems like the agency needs a reboot—something based on simplicity. Should things happen the way Steven sees them, he has a plan to get them running in tip-top shape.
The AI Transition
“AI has the potential to either enable another evolution of complexity or simplicity,” Steven said. “But ultimately, the solution will be simplicity empowered by AI.”
The next level in the process is bringing AI into the mix in a big way to cut through the red tape.
“I think AI will step in initially as what are called ‘closed’ or ‘siloed’ AI large language models,” he said. In this vision, persons whose jobs are to process forms are replaced by AI bots that are trained on siloed content, based on the almost 80 years of data the USPTO has collected.
On the other side, the one where the rest of us sit, will be another AI. This one is trained to interact with the USPTO AI Agents, and since the two speak their own language, they can process data more efficiently. This way, the form gets filled out, errors are detected and then fixed in real time, and we get what we need in the end: a patent application ready for examination.
But this is just one form and one part of the process. Eventually, there will be multiple form-specific AI Agents, with one larger AI Director-Agent that coordinates all of them. Think of it like a manager and their employees, but all of them live in and are stored on hardware. It’s an elegant solution to a very complex problem, and EvenFlow is the glue that holds it all together.
The EvenFlow Connection
EvenFlow helps with a few different steps in this system. First, it can be those siloed AI bots that process all of the forms and data. Then, with the humans involved, it can be a way to share that information anonymously and securely with other agencies. We all benefit from the data, and we all communicate together, just like we should.
This is the key. We use EvenFlow to securely bridge the siloed systems. We share that data with other government agencies but keep the silos intact. The humans involved can communicate more efficiently with each other, which speeds up productivity. It all fits together like LEGO, and you know I love that.
Now this is all stuff that I talk about in my new book. The AI Ecosystems Revolution is available today at Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, or your local bookseller. Pick up your copy and see how everything comes together. It really is quite special.
