Interview with: Edith Sokol, Partner

Partner Edith Sokol explains how Cohn, de Vries, Stadler & Co. (Herzog Patents) is helping clients unlock the full strategic value of their IP assets.

 

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Cohn, de Vries, Stadler & Co. (Herzog Patents) from your competitors?

From its establishment, Cohn, de Vries, Stadler & Co. (Herzog Patents) has identified a need in the local market for holistic approach towards IP. We look at IP as critical value-creating assets, with different needs in different stages of development and throughout the technological life cycle. This includes strategic guidance to clients, taking product development, technological roadmap, business development needs and benchmarking into consideration. This also includes meaningful additional services beyond the filing and prosecuting practice, such as monetization, enforcement, support in various IP-driven deal structuring, assistance in fund raising, branding strategy, trademark protection and enforcement. We believe that in order to provide meaningful insights we need to be intimately familiar with our client’s business, and as a result most of our clients regard us as an integral part of their business operation and as close advisors in the business decision-taking process. Assisting us is an ecosystem of strategic partners we formed over the years, enabling us to provide out-of-the-box solutions to a plethora of scenarios, tailored to our client’s needs, such as in non-dilutive funding, licensing, tech-transfer, etc.

 

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

 Inevitably, being a highly innovative country in conflict times, the past two years have seen a surge in defense technologies. We expect innovation in this technological field to further increase in the upcoming years. Quantum computing and cyber security are also on the rise recently, and will likely proceed in view of the high-pace technological advancement in these fields.

Additional fields which are becoming more prominent are renewable energy, recycling and food-tech, as local market looks at increasing self-sufficiency and relying less on imported technologies and products. For the same reasoning, we see an awakening in innovation originating from traditional industry, which has been to the most part dormant in past years innovation-wise, adding innovative aspects to legacy products/technologies. We expect these trends to continue in the next few years.

 

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

 Our recently-established strategic cooperation with Herzog Fox Neeman, Israel’s leading general law firm, bases CDS as a real one-stop-shop for all our clients’ business needs, being it IP-related services or any other legal services that our client may require throughout its operation, starting from incorporation all through large investment deals, licensing, partnering, M&As, IPOs, etc.

 

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

 As in most industries, AI tools are being used in the IP-sector to a larger extent in the past 1-2 years. Careful and proper utilization of these tools enables us to provide our clients with deeper insights relating to the IP field, for example carrying out more extensive landscaping and mapping of technologies, mining relevant data on trends and competitors, improving patentability and FTO searches, etc. CDS also uses in-house developed AI tools to streamline administrative processes, assisting in day-to-day management of our clients’ portfolios.

 

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

 As an example, one of our clients, that has an extensive portfolio of patents, saw a decline in its business. The patents cover cutting-edge innovation, and, through a careful process, we examined the patents and found that they are infringed by a number of products with a large global market. This opened a new lucrative opportunity for the company through enforcement and licensing of their patents, something that they were unaware of. This is now being realized through a series of enforcement actions and licensing transactions from which the company can expect much larger profits than from its traditional business.

As another example is a client operating for more than a decade in a technology that was in the forefront of technology when the company was founded but showed signs of diminishing in value. We have managed to identify innovations originating in an academic institute that fitted well with the company’s existing technology and, following our initiative, we and the company were jointly successful in negotiating and closing a valuable licensing deal that is now the basis for the company’s new line of products.

 

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

 Clients are becoming more sophisticated in all aspects of their business, which also radiates to their expectations from their service providers, including law firms. This includes, among others, expectations for high quality, but nonetheless cost-effective professional services, and an increased use of quality AI tools to meet these goals. The market is rapidly changing and there is a need for a service provider to be able to deliver quality products in a shorter time period and answering the rapidly evolving marketplace. To meet these challenges, we continuously increase the use of tailored AI tools including proprietary tools developed in-house. These tools aid us in preparation of work products for the client and in the complex task of managing the client’s portfolio. These tools cannot work by themselves, and require highly qualified and sophisticated professionals to make effective use of such tools in servicing clients.

In three years’ time we expect the firm to have an increased number of highly trained and qualified professionals, working with AI tools that automate routine operations and assignments, and are an effective helper in top-end professional tasks. We also expect that CDS will continue to lead and innovate in the IP space in Israel.