Patlytics Secures $14M Funding for Patent Analytics Platform

For years, patents have stirred up quite the debate in the tech industry. Some see them as vital for safeguarding intellectual property, while others view them as a hindrance to innovation. Now, with AI on the rise, the conversation around patents is heating up once again. Enter Patlytics, a New York startup that's shaking things up with its AI-powered patent analytics platform. This tool is designed to help corporations, IP professionals, and law firms streamline everything from patent discovery and analytics to prosecution and litigation. On Monday, Patlytics announced it had secured $14 million in a Series A funding round, led by Next47 and joined by existing investors like Google's Gradient, 8VC, Alumni Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Myriad Venture Partners. This latest round brings their total funding to $21 million, just nine months after their seed round back in April. Paul Lee, the CEO, and Arthur Jen, the CTO, launched Patlytics in January 2024. Lee, a former venture capitalist, noticed that IP companies were stuck using outdated methods for handling patents. Everything from discovery to analysis and reporting was a slow, manual slog. Jen, having managed patent filings at Magic, a crypto wallet company he co-founded, knew these pain points all too well. In an exclusive chat with TechCrunch, Lee shared, "Patlytics has an interesting genesis because I don’t have a legal background, and I initially held a lot of misconceptions around legal tech. Historically, there were many negative connotations and premises around selling technology to lawyers, but AI has truly changed these premises... What we’ve seen in the IP market is that people want better technology; there is a big push for higher-value work using LLMs, and most importantly, patent professionals crave quality." Patlytics leverages large language models (LLMs) and generative AI to tackle IP-related tasks like patent application drafting, invention disclosures, invalidity analysis, infringement detection/analysis, Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) analysis, and IP assets portfolio management. The startup, now a year old, has seen its annual recurring revenue (ARR) skyrocket by 20 times and its customer base grow by 18 times in just six months, maintaining a 300% month-over-month growth rate. While they didn't spill the beans on the exact number of customers, they mentioned that about half are law firms, and the other half are corporate clients from sectors like semiconductors, biotech, and pharmaceuticals. Patlytics has also expanded to South Korea and Japan and recently launched pilot products in London and Germany. Their client list boasts names like Abnormal Security, Google, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Richardson Oliver, Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg, Xerox, and Young Basile. With the fresh Series A funds, Patlytics aims to ramp up sales and pour more into product development. This includes hiring more engineers and expanding their product modules. Since April 2024, they've doubled their team from 11 to keep up with demand. Eric Lin, a seasoned IP litigator with over a decade of experience at firms like Paul Hastings, Morrison & Foerster, and Baker Botts, is joining as vice president of strategy to steer the company's next growth phase. Bob Steinberg, an advisory board member at Patlytics and chair of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Practice at Latham & Watkins, praised the platform, saying, "Patlytics can automatically conduct technical discovery, generating detailed claim charts for validity and infringement purposes that would traditionally require expensive experts and countless attorney hours. By generating confidential, detailed, and unbiased analysis, Patlytics’ goal is to ensure that parties involved in patent conflict resolution can have cost-effective access to critical information, helping to minimize gaps and discrepancies in understanding, facilitating negotiations, transactions, settlements and more efficient litigation." > IP analysis platform Patsnap launches CoPilot, its new AI assistant