IRACognizer

Jason Lee

2015-10-07

Topics

• Legal Reasoning• Business Model• Data Source• Software Development

Legal Reasoning• How lawyers think?—> IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis,

and Conclusion) forms the fundamental building blocks of legal analysis.

• ISSUE: What facts and circumstances brought these parties to court?

• RULE: What is the governing law for the issue?• ANALYSIS: Does the rule apply to these unique

facts?• CONCLUSION: How does the court's holding modify

the rule of law?

IRAC example• Facts:

• An old man who is very ill and near death makes an oral contract with his nephew. The terms of the contract are that the uncle will immediately give his nephew all of his life savings - $100,000 - in return for the nephew's promise to provide food and shelter for the old man until the man dies. The nephew takes the money and supports the old man at a cost of $10,000 a year. The old man lives longer than expected and is still alive after fifteen years, at which point the nephew cuts the old man off without further support.

• Issue:• Is an oral contract valid after fifteen years?

• Rule:• A contract must be in writing if it is not possible to

perform the contract within one year. - Statute of Frauds

• Analysis:• The Statute of Frauds does not state that the contract

must be performed within one year. It only states that it must be possible to complete the contract within a year. Since a very ill, old man could have died within one year, it is possible that the contract could have been completed.

• Conclusion:• The Statute of Frauds probably does not

apply in these circumstances, and the oral contract is not invalid even though it was not completed within one year.

• IRACognizer is reverse engineering the concept of “Code is Law” —> Law as executable code

• Code is Law (Source Code = Legal Code)

Business Model• Dual models

• free for those who could not afford• justice is too expensive and/or too late

• charge those who can afford• referencing concept in

• Open Source / GPL / LGPL• dual-licensing as a business model

• Creative Commons• Public Patent v. Private Patent

• my own thesis in law school (2004)

Data Source• PACER• CAFC• US PTO

• PTAB• published patent applications & granted patents

• US ITC• File format:

• HTML (web page)• PDF

• some would need extra OCR

• Starting point: patent litigation• Why

• high stake for high-tech industries• broader scope for value creation in IP

lifecycle• a debugger engine for patent prosecution

Ranking of the largest adjucated patent damages awards in the United States between 2005 and 2012 (in million U.S. dollars)

Software Development

• Data extraction• Text Processing + Computer Vision

• Reasoning engine• To know how Watson “thinks” as a

starting point• A.I. or I.A. (Intelligence Amplification)

• About Dentons• world’s largest law firm• 3,000+ lawyers and professionals in more than 80 locations

spanning 50-plus countries• a legacy of legal experience that dates back to 1742

• About NextLaw Labs• NextLaw Labs is a business accelerator focused on investing

in, developing and deploying new technologies to transform the practice of law.

• My planned software stacks• Server side

• Python (for implementing algorithm)• Solr (for facet search)• Plone (as Content Management System)• MySQL (rational db for basic search) • pdf2htmlEX (a precise PDF to HTML converter)• SlimerJS (web scrapping)• FineReader (for OCR processing of PDF files)

• Client side• iOS first, Android later• Cordova (building native mobile apps using HTML, CSS &

Javascript)• Xcode & iTunes Connect (for deployment to App Store)

• Cloud• IBM SoftLayer (up to USD 10,000 / month for one year)• IBM Global Entrepreneur (Bluemix, Watson, etc., up to USD

10,000 / month for one year)• Microsoft Azure (BizSpark Plus, up to USD 10,000 / month for

one year)

• Next step (R&D)• Research

• cognitive engine• NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit)• Stanford NLP Group• CodeX papers

• Development —> MVP (minimal viable product)• Claim Construction Search

• fetching data • parsing data

• iOS app prototype on iPad Pro

• Claim construction is a way of describing how the Court interprets a claim, what it means, how broad it is, etc.

• In a patent or patent application, the claims define, in technical terms, the scope of the protection conferred by a patent, or the protection sought in a patent application.

Q & A

• Reference• IRAC Examples,

http://www.lawnerds.com/guide/irac.html• http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qNW31cLKcLU/maxresdefault.j

pg• Ranking of the largest adjucated patent damages

awards in the United States between 2005 and 2012 (in million U.S. dollars), http://www.statista.com/statistics/257208/ranking-of-the-largest-patent-damages-awards-in-the-us/

• IP lifecycle, http://www.techinsights.com/design/img/content/lifecycle.png

• http://www.rossintelligence.com