The CEIPI IP Business Talk with Edd Cavanna and Daniel Speed from Mathys & Squire explored how quantum companies can identify and protect the technical control points that may later determine their position within an emerging value chain👉 A series of activities that create and deliver value in a product for end-users..
The discussion showed that protecting quantum innovation👉 Practical application of new ideas to create value. is not primarily a question of placing patents around every layer of a complex technical system. It requires companies to identify which technical features create differentiation, dependency or bargaining power, and then decide how patents, trade secrets, contracts, open source and collaboration rights should be combined. The Quantum IP Expert Contributors placed this challenge into a wider strategic context. Their questions addressed AI supported invention harvesting, freedom to operate👉 Strategic analysis to determine whether a product or service might infringe existing IP rights., patent👉 A legal right granting exclusive control over an invention for a limited time. thickets, international patentability, dominant designs, standards, publication pressure, open source, portfolio selection and the relationship between protection and the future business model👉 A business model outlines how a company creates, delivers, and captures value..
Key message:
Protecting quantum innovation across the stack does not mean patenting the entire stack. It means identifying the technical dependencies that support the company’s intended market position and building a protection architecture that can evolve with the technology, the ecosystem and the business model.
Replay the IP Business Talk of Wednesday, 15 July 2026
Guests
- Edd Cavanna, Partner and Patent Attorney at Mathys & Squire LLP
- Daniel Speed, Trainee Patent Attorney at Mathys & Squire LLP
Quantum IP Expert Contributors
- Virginia Driver, European Patent Attorney and Co Founder of AttainIP
- Erik Lumens, European Patent Attorney and Senior Associate at HOYNG ROKH MONEGIER
- Anji Miller, Senior Partner for Academic Engagement at LifeArc
- Guillaume Stern, Partner and Head of the Physics Practice at Reinhold Cohn Group
- Petronela Antonia Bauer, Managing Director of 3P IP Strategic IP Decision Lab
- Freddy Guemeni, Associate Director at the University of Manchester Innovation Factory
- Henry K.H. Wang, UCL School of Management
- Udo Roman Arthur Gennari, Senior IP Expert at IP Consultancy Gennari Udo Roman Arthur
The CEIPI IP Business Talk began with a fundamental problem that is particularly visible in quantum technology: an invention rarely arrives as a clearly defined object.
A quantum solution may combine processors, photonics, cryogenics, control electronics, calibration routines, protocols, error correction, classical software, quantum algorithms and mathematical methods. An inventor👉 A person who creates new devices, methods, or processes. may present the complete system, but the economically relevant invention may be hidden in a much smaller technical feature.
Edd Cavanna described the process of identifying this feature as invention mining. The role of the patent adviser is not simply to accept an invention disclosure and convert it into legal language. It is to question what has changed, why it matters, which alternatives exist and which part of the solution a competitor would actually need.
This distinction is especially important where academic inventors focus on the scientific result. The most important patentable contribution may be a stabilisation method, control routine, cooling solution, manufacturing step or interface that made the scientific result possible. The contribution may therefore be located in the methods section rather than in the headline of the academic paper.
AI can support invention harvesting, but not replace strategic judgement
Virginia Driver moved the discussion directly into one of the most current questions in patent practice. She asked whether AI was already being used to support invention harvesting, invention definition or the preparation of strategic priority applications, and which particular difficulties arise when AI is applied to quantum inventions👉 A novel method, process or product that is original and useful..
Daniel Speed explained that his own approach still relies primarily on manually analysing research papers, technical material and the underlying scientific context. The question nevertheless revealed an important future direction for quantum IP. AI can help structure technical material, compare different embodiments, identify inconsistencies and formulate questions that inventors may not have considered. This can be valuable in a field where relevant knowledge is distributed across mathematical descriptions, experimental data, software and hardware architectures.
The limits are equally important. An AI system may produce a convincing explanation without reliably distinguishing between mathematical elegance, technical feasibility, patentable contribution and commercial relevance. The decision about what constitutes the strategically relevant invention therefore cannot be delegated to the technology. AI can become an analytical sparring partner, but the final assessment requires technical understanding, legal judgement and knowledge of the company’s intended market position.
Freddy Guemeni extended this point by arguing that invention mining should not stop at technical novelty👉 Requirement that an invention must be new and not previously disclosed.. It should also test whether a feature supports the product roadmap and the future competitive position. This changes the purpose of invention harvesting. The objective is not to maximise the number of invention disclosures. It is to identify those technical developments that could later create control, support investment, strengthen a licensing👉 Permission to use a right or asset granted by its owner. position or protect a strategically important dependency.
The invention must be connected to commercial purpose
One of Edd Cavanna’s central messages was that a patent adviser must understand why the company wants a patent. A company may want to prevent imitation, support a funding round, create a licensable asset, establish credibility with a strategic partner or secure a position within an emerging platform. Each purpose can require a different patent scope and a different description of the invention.
Cavanna therefore characterised the patent attorney as a storyteller. The story must explain the technical problem, the solution and its contribution convincingly enough to work before an examiner. It may later also have to work before an investor, licensing partner or judge. This does not mean replacing technical precision with marketing language. It means structuring the technical reality so that the protected contribution remains connected to the commercial reason for seeking protection.
Freddy Guemeni placed this into the context of the company’s role in the value chain. He asked how early that role should be defined when developing the patent strategy.
Cavanna’s answer was deliberately flexible. A company must protect what makes sense from the perspective of its current plan, but it must remain prepared to revise that plan as new opportunities emerge or existing technical routes become less viable. The portfolio should therefore not be treated as a fixed representation of the company’s technology. It is an evolving set of control positions that must be reviewed as the product, financing strategy and ecosystem role change.
The broader composition of the contributor panel reinforced this business perspective. Guillaume Stern brought the portfolio and physics practice perspective, Erik Lumens contributed the combined lens of patent prosecution and contentious patent work, and Henry K.H. Wang represented the management and innovation perspective.
Their participation reflected an essential point: quantum IP decisions cannot be made from a single professional viewpoint. Technical credibility, legal scope, enforceability, commercialisation and organisational decision making👉 The process of choosing the best option among alternatives. have to be considered together.
A coherent architecture protects value, not every technical layer
Quantum computing is often described as a technology stack. This can create the misleading assumption that a coherent IP strategy👉 Approach to manage, protect, and leverage IP assets. must protect every layer of that stack.
Freddy Guemeni challenged this interpretation directly. A coherent protection architecture does not mean patenting every processor, component, protocol, control system and software layer. It means protecting the points where the company expects to create and capture value, while deliberately deciding what should remain confidential, licensed, open or accessible through collaboration.
The starting point is therefore not the technical stack alone. It is the future value architecture. For each layer, the company should ask whether it creates differentiation, dependency or bargaining power. It should consider whether competitors can design around it, whether infringement👉 Unauthorized use or exploitation of IP rights. would be detectable and whether openness could accelerate adoption more effectively than exclusivity. Where hardware, control systems and software are closely interdependent, the strategically important positions may lie at the interfaces between them. A control loop between classical and quantum processing, a compiler that allows applications to operate across different hardware systems, a calibration routine that improves reliability or a protocol that becomes necessary for interoperability👉 Systems' ability to exchange and use data seamlessly. may create more leverage than an isolated component.
Freddy Guemeni also pointed out that open source can be part of the IP strategy for quantum software where adoption and ecosystem growth are as important as exclusivity. This is not an abandonment of IP strategy. It is a decision to use controlled openness to influence adoption, attract developers or establish an interface. The question is not whether the company protects everything. The question is whether it understands what it is making open, what it is keeping exclusive and how both choices support the intended business model.
International drafting requires technical and jurisdictional framing
Quantum software and algorithms create a particularly difficult patentability problem because the contribution may initially appear mathematical or abstract.
Daniel Speed explained that successful drafting requires an understanding of where the mathematics becomes technically meaningful. The application must show how the method interacts with hardware, controls a process, reduces noise, improves resource use or produces another technically relevant effect.
Udo Gennari raised the additional difficulty that software and mathematical inventions are approached differently by patent offices in Europe, the United States and China.
Speed’s response was that the intended jurisdictions should be considered from the beginning. Applications should be drafted with the relevant legal standards in mind, while clearly explaining the technical contribution in terms that remain useful across different systems.
Where time permits, the application can be adapted to the company’s commercial markets. Where an imminent conference or publication creates pressure, a sensible approach may be to prepare the first filing with the strictest anticipated jurisdiction in mind. The issue is not merely formal compliance. Poor framing can cause a commercially valuable technical contribution to appear as an abstract mathematical method. Good framing connects the mathematical operations to the hybrid system, data flow, measurement, feedback or hardware effect that gives them technical meaning.
Udo Gennari also noted that a large part of the relevant state of the art in quantum technology is found in scientific publications rather than patents.
This creates a demanding search environment. Relevant material may appear in academic journals, conference proceedings or preprints shortly after a patent filing. Fortunately, researchers often have detailed knowledge of the literature because they must already position their own work against existing publications. This makes close interaction with inventors essential. Patent searching cannot be separated from scientific dialogue.
Freedom to operate must address both visible patents and invisible capabilities
Petronela Antonia Bauer introduced one of the most important commercial questions: does freedom to operate still provide meaningful guidance in a quantum patent landscape containing patents of uneven quality, while much of the decisive process and hardware knowledge remains protected as trade secrets?
Edd Cavanna argued that freedom to operate remains valuable, provided the analysis is performed by advisers capable of assessing both the apparent claim scope and the underlying strength of the patents. A relevant patent should not automatically be treated as an immovable barrier. The analysis should also consider whether the patent is vulnerable to revocation, whether the relevant claims are likely to survive scrutiny and whether the company can design around them.
Trade secrets create a different issue. They do not represent enforceable third party rights that can block freedom to operate in the same way as patents. Their importance becomes visible during investment and implementation analysis. An investor may need to know whether a company has the confidential know how, processes and technical capability required to implement its patents. A strong patent portfolio without the capability to make the protected technology work may provide only limited reassurance.
At the same time, quantum companies often operate in an environment with significant employee mobility, university collaboration and movement between startups. Trade secret👉 Protects confidential business info for competitive advantage. governance must therefore address access rights, documentation, employee transitions, collaboration agreements and the flow of technical knowledge between organisations.
Petronela Bauer’s question consequently expanded freedom to operate beyond a simple patent landscape exercise. Quantum due diligence must examine whether the company can use the relevant technology, whether third party patents create credible barriers and whether the internal know how required for execution is sufficiently controlled.
Patent thickets, dominant designs and standards remain open questions
Anji Miller asked whether patent thickets are already emerging in quantum computing.
Daniel Speed expressed caution about applying this description too early. Quantum technology still contains a wide and growing range of hardware modalities, software architectures and application problems. Innovation is taking place in many distinct areas, while the field remains highly collaborative.
This may delay the formation of dense overlapping patent positions in some parts of the industry. It does not mean that the risk👉 The probability of adverse outcomes due to uncertainty in future events. should be ignored. As certain architectures mature, interfaces stabilise and dominant technical approaches emerge, portfolios may become more concentrated around strategically essential layers.
Udo Gennari connected this issue to the possibility of patent pools. Standards are already being discussed in areas including computing protocols, quantum communication and cryptography. Edd Cavanna considered it plausible that some of these activities could eventually lead to standard essential patents and patent pools. The commercial relevance of a patent will also depend on which technical architecture the market adopts.
Gennari used the historical competition👉 Rivalry between entities striving for a shared goal or limited resource. between Betamax and VHS to illustrate that technical superiority does not guarantee market success. Licensing strategy, ecosystem support, compatibility, cost and user value can determine which format becomes dominant.
Quantum technology may experience similar contests between hardware modalities, software environments, communication protocols and platform ecosystems. Patents protecting a technically impressive architecture may lose much of their commercial relevance if the market adopts another route. Portfolio strategy must therefore monitor more than scientific progress. It must follow standards, partnerships, funding, adoption, interfaces and the formation of ecosystems.
Collaboration requires explicit control of background and foreground IP
Quantum industrialisation depends on cooperation between universities, startups, hardware companies, software developers, application partners and public funding organisations.
Cavanna emphasised that joint development agreements should clearly define what each party brings into the project and what happens to the results.
Background IP can include patents, software, data, processes, confidential information and technical know how. The parties must decide which rights the other participants receive and whether those rights end with the project. Foreground IP requires equally clear rules. The agreement should determine ownership, filing control, access rights, licences, fields of use and what happens if the cooperation ends.
Freddy Guemeni added a practical governance instrument: a regularly updated project IP register. Such a register can document background IP, foreground IP, ownership and access rights throughout the cooperation rather than attempting to reconstruct the situation after a disagreement has occurred.
Anji Miller’s technology transfer👉 The transfer of intangible goods to make scientific findings economically usable. perspective is especially relevant here. Quantum partnerships often begin while the commercial route is still uncertain. Academic publication, startup formation, licensing, investment and joint research may overlap.
The purpose of contractual clarity is not to make collaboration defensive. It is to preserve the ability of each participant to commercialise the results and continue developing its own technology.
The Quantim IP Expert Contributors turned an interview into a strategic decision map
The contributions of the eight Quantum IP Expert Contributors moved the discussion beyond the narrow question of quantum patentability.
Virginia Driver introduced the role and limitations of AI in invention harvesting. Freddy Guemeni connected invention definition, portfolio selection, open source and protection architecture to the future value chain. Petronela Antonia Bauer challenged conventional freedom to operate analysis by adding patent quality, trade secrets and implementation capability.
Anji Miller raised questions about patent thickets, jurisdictional differences and the difficult choice between patents and other forms of IP under budget constraints. Udo Gennari connected international drafting, scientific prior art, patent pools, standards and dominant design👉 A dominant design is a widely accepted standard within an industry. risks.
Erik Lumens, Guillaume Stern and Henry K.H. Wang added the broader professional lenses required to interpret these questions, including physics based patent analysis, prosecution and enforcement, portfolio construction, commercialisation and management.
Together, these perspectives demonstrated why protecting quantum innovation across the stack cannot be reduced to patent drafting. The real task is to recognise inventions before disclosure, distinguish scientific novelty from commercially relevant technical contribution, select the control points that support the business model and coordinate patents with secrecy, contracts, open source, standards and freedom to operate.
Quantum companies do not need the largest possible portfolio. They need a portfolio that remains connected to the technical dependencies, ecosystem relationships and commercial positions that may matter as the industry matures.
Guests: Edd Cavanna and Daniel Speed
Edd Cavanna is a Partner and Patent Attorney at Mathys & Squire LLP in London. His practice includes physics, engineering, electronics, software and energy technologies, as well as patent drafting, prosecution, freedom to operate, licensing and joint development matters.
Before entering the patent profession, he studied physics and mathematics and completed a PhD in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Cambridge. His scientific background includes quantum information and experimental superconductivity.
Daniel Speed is a Trainee Patent Attorney at Mathys & Squire LLP. Before entering patent practice, he worked in academic research and teaching.
He holds an MMath in Mathematics from Cardiff University and a PhD in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics from the University of Bristol. His background gives him particular insight into quantum information theory, mathematical methods, software and algorithm related inventions.
Quantum IP Expert Contributors
Virginia Driver is a European Patent Attorney and Co Founder of AttainIP. She has more than three decades of experience in patent practice and IP strategy and is currently involved in developing AI supported tools for patent professionals. Her contribution focused on how AI may support invention harvesting and strategic filing while preserving the human judgement required to assess technical feasibility and commercial relevance.
Erik Lumens is a European and Dutch Patent Attorney, UPC representative and Senior Associate at HOYNG ROKH MONEGIER. He has academic backgrounds in physics, mathematics, theoretical physics and mathematical sciences. His patent practice includes drafting, prosecution, strategic advice and litigation👉 The formal process of resolving disputes through proceedings in court worldwide. support across complex technology fields.
Anji Miller is Senior Partner for Academic Engagement and Programme Director for Translational Fellowships at LifeArc. She has extensive experience in technology transfer, IP strategy, licensing, strategic partnerships, funding, company formation and the translation of academic research into practical applications. Her questions placed patent strategy into the wider realities of commercialisation, limited budgets and publication pressure.
Guillaume Stern is a Partner and Head of the Physics Practice at Reinhold Cohn Group. He is qualified as a patent attorney in France, Europe and Israel. His work includes strategic IP advice, patent portfolio development, freedom to operate, due diligence, validity and infringement analysis in fields including physics, quantum technology, photonics, electronics and aerospace.
Petronela Antonia Bauer is Managing Director of 3P IP Strategic IP Decision Lab and advises aviation and deep technology startups as a fractional Head of IP. Her work focuses on translating innovation into defensible and investor ready IP positions. Her contribution highlighted the relationship between freedom to operate, patent quality, trade secrets, employee mobility and the company’s practical ability to implement its technology.
Freddy Guemeni is an Associate Director at the University of Manchester Innovation Factory, a European Patent Attorney and an experienced leader in IP strategy and innovation capability. His contributions connected invention mining and portfolio design to product roadmaps, value creation, ecosystem positioning and open source. He emphasised that the objective is not to protect every layer, but to protect those dependencies that support the future business position.
Henry K.H. Wang is associated with UCL School of Management and works internationally as an author, adviser and speaker. His management perspective contributes to the wider question of how emerging technologies, sustainability, innovation governance and business strategy can be translated into organisational decision making.
Udo Roman Arthur Gennari is a Senior IP Expert with experience in semantic patent searching, freedom to operate, patent valuation, licensing and support for funding, cooperation and market entry. His contributions connected quantum portfolio strategy to international patentability, scientific prior art, patent pools, standardisation and the risk that technically strong patents may become commercially irrelevant when another architecture becomes dominant.
