Description

A focused course, tailored for you

The Lead IP Counsel Generative-AI and Open-Source Playbook

A working playbook for the IP counsel sitting between product, research, open-source engineering, and the assertion letters that keep arriving.

You are the one person who has to give product a yes-or-no on training-data scope, give research a yes-or-no on releasing model weights under a permissive licence, give the open-source program office a yes-or-no on a copyleft dependency, and give the board a one-page position on an NPE assertion. Same week. Four different audiences. One defensible IP position underneath.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Lead IP Counsel at a hyperscale social platform now carries a matter mix that did not exist three years ago. Generative-AI training-data questions land from product. Model-weights release questions land from research. Copyleft contamination questions land from the open-source program office. Patent assertion letters from non-practising entities target specific features, specific ad-ranking patents, specific recommender-system claims. Each one needs a position that is doctrinally sound, internally consistent, and intelligible to the audience asking. The hard part is not knowing the law. The hard part is producing a single artefact per matter that product, engineering, the OSPO, outside counsel, and the GC can all act on without rewriting it. This course is the working playbook for that role. It assumes the reader already knows section 102, section 101, fair-use four-factor analysis, the Oracle v. Google posture on APIs, and the relevant GPL and Apache 2.0 mechanics. It does not re-teach doctrine. It teaches the artefacts and the decision sequence.

What you walk away with

Produce a single defensible training-data IP position memo that product, research, the OSPO, and outside counsel can all act on without rewriting.
Issue a copyleft contamination decision on an inbound engineering pull request inside one business day, with a written rationale that survives external review.
Respond to an NPE assertion letter with a position memo the GC can take to the board the same week, not the same quarter.
Stand up a model-weights release decision template the research org can self-serve against, escalating only the edge cases.
Maintain a current position log so the same question asked twice gets the same answer, traceable to the artefact that decided it.

The 12 modules

Module 1. The matter mix and the artefact stack

Open with a current inbox snapshot. Categorise the inbound by audience and by artefact required. Map each matter type to the one document that closes it. Establish the discipline that every IP position lives in exactly one artefact, not three emails and a calendar invite. Templates for the matter triage sheet and the artefact register a Lead IP Counsel reuses every week.

Module 2. Training-data scope as an IP question

The single hardest call on the desk. Walk through how to decompose a training-data scope question into the IP sub-questions that actually have answers: copyright in the source corpus, contract terms in the scraping path, licence stacks in the curated subset, publicity and personality rights in user-generated content. Produce the position memo template product can act on without going back for clarifications.

Module 3. Model weights as a distributable artefact

Weights are not source code, are not data, and the analogy to either breaks. Work the licence decision sequence from first principles. When permissive release is defensible. When weights-only with a use restriction is defensible. When the right answer is no release. Includes the worked example of a research org pushing for a permissive release on a fine-tune of a third-party base model, and the memo that closed it.

Module 4. Copyleft contamination on an inbound pull request

The OSPO escalates an engineering pull request that brings in a GPLv3 dependency. The product is shipped as a binary to billions of devices. Walk the contamination analysis in the order a Lead IP Counsel actually walks it: linkage type, distribution path, derivative-work test, dynamic versus static. Produce the same-day decision memo the OSPO and engineering both act on. Template included.

Module 5. Apache 2.0, MIT, and the patent grant question

Permissive licences are not interchangeable. The patent grant in Apache 2.0 has consequences for the company patent portfolio that MIT does not. Walk the position the company takes on accepting code under each permissive licence into the codebase, and the position the company takes on releasing code under each. Includes the Apache 2.0 versus MIT decision template the OSPO uses on every new repo.

Module 6. NPE assertion letter, week one

Letter arrives. Names a specific feature. References specific patents. Demands a meeting. Walk the first seventy-two hours. Patent-claim scoping. Prior-art landscape pull. Engineering interview to map the accused feature to the actual code. Outside-counsel scoping memo. The artefact the GC needs by end of week one is a one-page assessment with a recommended posture. Template included.

Module 7. NPE assertion, month one

The position memo for the board, the budget envelope for outside counsel, the discovery posture, the inter-partes review or post-grant review decision. Walk the trade-off matrix between settle, defend, and challenge-the-patent. Includes the worked NPE assertion log a Lead IP Counsel maintains across multiple concurrent matters so portfolio-level patterns are visible to the GC.

Module 8. Standard-essential patents and the platform stack

Codecs, network protocols, hardware acceleration. The platform ships products that touch FRAND-encumbered patents. Walk the SEP exposure map a Lead IP Counsel maintains. The position on a willing-licensee posture. The interaction with the company's own SEP holdings if any. The artefact engineering needs when adopting a new codec or protocol, and the licence-clearance memo template that closes it.

Module 9. Trade secrets in a research-and-publish culture

Research orgs publish. The IP function protects what is genuinely trade-secret. Walk the publication-review process: what model architecture is publishable, what dataset construction is publishable, what evaluation methodology is publishable, what is held back. The trade-secret register a Lead IP Counsel maintains. The interaction with employee mobility and the inevitable departing-researcher question.

Module 10. Defensive patent strategy on AI features

What to file, what not to file, and when to file. Walk the defensive-publication versus patent-filing decision tree on AI features. The interaction with cross-licence agreements the platform already holds. The portfolio-pruning conversation with the GC. Includes the AI-feature invention-disclosure intake template and the prioritisation matrix used at the quarterly portfolio review.

Module 11. The position log and the consistency discipline

Same question, same answer, traceable. Build the position log a Lead IP Counsel maintains so the third time product asks about training-data scope on a new corpus, the answer arrives in hours and references the prior artefacts that decided it. The schema, the retention practice, the interaction with privilege, and the handoff protocol when matters transition to outside counsel.

Module 12. Working with outside counsel, the GC, and the board

The three audiences a Lead IP Counsel writes for outside the IP team. Each one needs a different artefact. Walk the format, length, and review cadence of the outside-counsel scoping memo, the GC position brief, and the board IP-risk update. The discipline that the same underlying position memo gets translated into three audience-tailored artefacts, never rewritten from scratch.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

Module 2 (training-data scope) applies when product is asking whether a new data source can enter the training corpus, and the answer needs to hold for the next twelve months of fine-tunes.

Module 4 (copyleft contamination) applies when the OSPO escalates a pull request and engineering needs a same-day answer.

Module 6 (NPE assertion week one) applies when a demand letter is on the desk and the GC needs a position by end of week.

Module 11 (position log) applies after the first six months in role, when product starts asking the same question twice and the IP function needs an institutional memory artefact.

What you get with this course

Twelve written modules in the Art of Service learning environment.
Twelve downloadable templates: matter triage sheet, artefact register, training-data position memo, model-weights release decision, copyleft contamination decision, NPE week-one assessment, NPE position log, SEP exposure map, trade-secret register, AI-feature invention disclosure, position log schema, audience-tailored artefact translator.
Worked examples drawn from publicly documented matters, sanitised and reusable.
The hand-built implementation playbook tailored to the buyer's specific matter mix and stack.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours: account in the Art of Service learning environment is provisioned and the hand-built implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.

Module-by-module: each module is self-contained and can be read in the order the matter mix demands, not the order they are numbered.

Templates: every template is a working document, not a wireframe. Drop in the matter, fill the fields, ship the artefact.

Before and after

Before

Same IP question arrives from product, research, and the OSPO in the same week. Lead IP Counsel produces three different artefacts, in three different formats, with subtly different positions. Outside counsel gets a fourth version. The GC sees a fifth. The board never sees a consolidated view.

After

Single position memo per matter. Three audience-tailored translations off the same underlying memo. Position log surfaces precedent inside hours. Board update is a one-page rollup from the log, not a from-scratch rewrite each quarter.

What happens if you do not address this

The position drift compounds. Six months of subtly-different answers to the same question becomes a discoverable inconsistency when an NPE assertion lands. The cost of resolving that inconsistency at litigation time is hundreds of times the cost of resolving it at intake time.

Who it is for

Lead IP Counsel or Senior IP Counsel inside a hyperscale consumer-internet platform, large social or messaging company, or large AI research lab. Sits between product, applied research, the open-source program office, the litigation team, and outside counsel. Owns the IP position on generative-AI training data, model-weights licensing, open-source compliance, and inbound patent assertion. Reports into the AGC for IP or directly into the GC for IP matters. Has a JD, is admitted, has at least seven years post-qualification IP experience, and has shipped at least one significant licensing or assertion-response matter.

Who this is NOT for. Not for IP attorneys at law firms billing matters out. Not for patent prosecution-only counsel. Not for trademark-only counsel. Not for in-house counsel whose remit is contracts and commercial rather than IP. Not for IP counsel at companies that do not train, fine-tune, distribute, or open-source models.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Roughly twelve to sixteen hours total reading. Each template saves at least one hour on the first matter it is applied to, more on every matter after that.

Why $199 is the right number

CLE programmes teach doctrine. This course teaches artefacts. Treatises catalogue case law. This course catalogues the templates a working Lead IP Counsel reuses across matters. Outside counsel memos are billed by the hour and live in matter-specific silos. This course is a portable artefact library a Lead IP Counsel owns.

FAQ

Does the course re-teach IP doctrine?

No. It assumes a Lead IP Counsel already knows section 102, section 101, fair-use four-factor analysis, the Oracle v. Google posture on APIs, FRAND mechanics, and the relevant copyleft mechanics. The course teaches the artefacts and the decision sequences a Lead IP Counsel uses on top of that doctrine.

Is the implementation playbook generic?

No. The playbook is hand-built after the buyer describes the specific matter mix and stack at intake. Two buyers get two different playbooks.

Is any of the content jurisdiction-specific?

The doctrinal framing is US-led, with explicit cross-references to the EU AI Act, the UK IPO position on training data, and the Japanese article 30-4 carve-out where they bear on the same matter. The artefacts are jurisdiction-portable.

Is this a substitute for outside counsel?

No. It is the artefact discipline that makes outside-counsel engagements cheaper, faster, and more consistent. The scoping memo template in module 6 in particular saves billable hours on every new matter.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.