Ignite Legal: What Every Founder Needs to Know About IP Strategy with Dina Blikshteyn | Ep255

Episode notes

In 2017, Google published a research paper called “Attention Is All You Need.” It quietly introduced the transformer—the architecture behind today’s AI boom. They didn’t patent it. Fast forward a few years, and that single decision helped unlock an entire industry… but also left billions in potential defensibility on the table. That tension—between speed and ownership, innovation and protection—is exactly where Dina Blikshteyn operates. The Founder’s Blind Spot: You’re Moving Fast… But Leaking Value Most founders don’t ignore intellectual property. They just delay it . You’re building, pitching, hiring, shipping. IP feels like something you’ll “get to later”—right after product-market fit, right after your next round, right after things slow down (which they never do). Here’s the problem: IP has a clock. And it starts ticking the moment you talk. Dina Blikshteyn, Partner at Haynes Boone and co-chair of its AI practice, sees this pattern constantly. Founders disclose their ideas in pitch meetings, conferences, or demos—only to realize later that they’ve accidentally disqualified themselves from global patent protection.