Patenting AI Inventions in 2026: Drafting for Section 101 Eligibility and Using AI Tools to Do It

Ryan earned his J.D., cum laude, from Northwestern University School of Law concurrently with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, serving as an Executive Editor of the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property. He holds a B.S., magna cum laude, in computer science from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, where he was president of the school's Association of Computing Machinery chapter, and he is a Certified Java Programmer. His hands-on technical experience spans AI platforms and models including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini; machine learning frameworks including TensorFlow and PyTorch; and languages such as Python, R, Java, C#/.NET, C++/C, and JavaScript. He is admitted in Illinois, before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. District Courts for the Northern District of Illinois, the Eastern District of Texas, and the Western District of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ryan writes and speaks regularly on patent strategy for AI and software. His recent commentary in IPO Daily News covers the Federal Circuit's finding that AI-based dental monitoring claims are ineligible under Section 101 (September 14, 2026), Federal Circuit guidance for drafting AI patent claims (September 2, 2026), and WIPO's report that generative AI patent activity nearly tripled in two years (September 1, 2026); his article on patenting strategies for AI in the autonomous vehicle space appeared in IP Litigator on July 15, 2026. He moderates PatentNext, a blog on patent and IP law for next-generation technologies launched in March 2021, and was named a Mondaq Thought Leader for Intellectual Property, United States, in the Autumn 2021 awards for that work. His writing has also appeared in World Intellectual Property Review and Bloomberg Law, and he has served as a panelist for the International Intellectual Property Law Association and the University of Illinois Chicago Annual IP Conference. His professional recognition includes IAM Strategy 300 and IAM Strategy 300 Global Leaders, selection to The Best Lawyers in America in Patent Law since 2024, the Illinois Super Lawyers list since 2023, and Leading Lawyers honors since 2021, following Super Lawyers Rising Star and Leading Lawyers Emerging Lawyer recognition in 2019 and 2020.

Within Intellectual Property Owners (IPO), Ryan chairs the Software Medical Devices Subcommittee and serves on the AI & Other Emerging Technologies Committee and the Software Related Inventions Committee. He is a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago, serves as Secretary of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA)/U.S. Liaison Council, and provides pro bono representation through Lawyers for the Creative Arts.

Ryan's AI-assisted drafting practice uses product and portfolio information across related applications to promote consistent terminology and fuller descriptions of inventions, develop specifications with support for broader coverage, fallback positions, and future continuations, and articulate the technical improvements relevant to software patent eligibility. Tool selection and use are built around encryption, matter-level data segregation, controlled access, and protections against using client information to train AI models, with attorney review of every AI-generated output for accuracy and unsupported statements before it enters work product. His prosecution work covers agentic AI, large language models, and machine learning; software as a medical device and software in a medical device; robotics and self-driving vehicles; cloud and client-server architectures; blockchain and cryptocurrency; security, cryptography, and encryption; and financial services and insurance innovations, among other fields. He also prepares patentability, non-infringement, validity, and freedom-to-operate opinions, and his litigation experience informs how he drafts claims with later assertion and challenge in mind. Ryan represents clients in U.S. district courts including the Northern District of California, the Eastern District of Texas, and the Northern District of Illinois, before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and at the U.S. International Trade Commission. Representative results include a non-infringement jury verdict for Apple in ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. v. Apple, Inc. (E.D. Tex.), a General Exclusion Order for PopSockets in Certain Collapsible Sockets for Mobile Electronic Devices (USITC 337-TA-1056), a non-infringement jury verdict as trial counsel for Extreme Networks in Extreme Networks, Inc. v. Enterasys Networks, Inc. (W.D. Wis.), and institution on all grounds of inter partes review petitions filed for Old Republic General Insurance Group.