Patlytican AI-powered patent analysis platform, aims to help companies, IP professionals and law firms accelerate their patent workflows Discovery, analysis, settlements and prosecution through to litigation.
The young startup secured $4.5 million in seed funding, was oversubscribed and closed within days, led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused VC arm.
Patlytics was co-founded by CEO Paul Lee, a former venture capitalist at Tribe, and CTO Arthur Jen, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded the Web3 wallet platform Magic and served as CTO. Their shared vision and complementary skills laid the foundation for Patlytics, driven by their first-hand experiences and a deep understanding of the industry’s pain points.
The co-founders told TechCrunch that they saw many opportunities in the IP space. Lee, who has spent most of his career investing in vertical SaaS and AI as well as a few legal tech startups, encountered many IP companies that were using outdated techniques in a workflow that was (in his opinion) digitizing should be. While at Magic, Jen was heavily involved in filing and defending patents to protect company technology.
“The AI revolution in patent intelligence is not just about efficiency; “It’s about changing the way patent professionals strategize and engage with the entire patent lifecycle,” Lee said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. “Given the complex mix of technical and legal expertise required for patent work, we have developed our platform to be an indispensable ally for patent professionals.”
“Traditional patent prosecution and litigation workflows that rely heavily on manual entry are complex and time-consuming,” Lee continued. The research and discovery phase, in which large amounts of patent data are searched and analyzed, requires significant effort involving Internet research, selective manual investigations, and inherently inefficient processes.”
What sets the startup apart from its industry peers such as Anaqua, Clarivate and Patsnap is that Patlytics is “the only provider to offer end-design and comprehensive charting solutions” in its current AI-first approach to insights and analytics, Lee explained.
Another difference is that the platform is not based solely on software solutions but allows human participation in the process.
Photo credit: Co-Founder of Patlytics: Arthur Jen (CTO) and Paul Lee (CEO) / Patlytics
The outfit recently launched its product SOC 2 certified, and already serves several top law firms and some in-house corporate counsel as clients. The company did not disclose the number of customers due to confidentiality agreements. Target groups include IP law firms and companies with multiple patents.
“Intellectual property protection remains an important priority and business requirement for information technology, physical products and biotechnology companies. As companies incorporate AI into their new products, companies from automotive to pharmaceuticals are interested in protecting new inventions and monitoring for infringement by competitors,” said Darian Shirazi, General Partner of Gradient. “We are excited to partner with the Patlytics team as they leverage recent transformative innovations in AI to reinvent the intellectual property protection industry.”
The company will use the proceeds to invest in product and AI development and go-to-market functionality, with the aim of covering all relevant patent prosecution and litigation workflows. In addition, there are plans to strengthen the engineering team. The company employs 11 people.
“Acknowledging that navigating the complex intellectual property landscape can be tedious, our AI-integrated patent workflow aims to increase efficiency and provide insights, transforming intellectual property protection into one dynamic force shaping the future technology landscape,” said Jen. “We develop our technology with data security and privacy in mind and protect sensitive information throughout the entire patent lifecycle.”
Other participants in the round included 8VC, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures, Position Ventures, Tribe Capital and Vermilion Ventures. Notably, the round also attracted a variety of angel backers, including partners from leading law firms, Datadog President Amit Agarwal, Fiscal Note founder Tim Hwang and Tapas Media founder Chang Kim.