Building the Ultimate Patent Assistant with Evan Zimmerman

Evan Zimmerman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Edge, that helps patent attorneys, patent agents, and inventors make the patent process less painful and more effective.

He earned a Juris Doctor (JD) degree from the UC Berkeley Law School, where he specialized in IP law. Seeing the potential of AI to transform the patent system, Zimmerman teamed up with Len Boyette, an early employee at Okta. Together, they went through the Y Combinator accelerator program in 2022 to build Edge.

Edge's AI-powered patent assistant aims to automate and streamline every step of the patent process, from recreating patent claims from basic technology descriptions to suggesting improvements and identifying relevant prior art. This approach removes the grunt work for attorneys and patent agents while making high-quality patents more accessible for inventors and companies.

The patent system is critical for protecting inventions and stimulating innovation, but is often cumbersome for all involved. For attorneys and patent agents, the system involves painstaking hours poring over documents, extracting key technical details, and translating those details into watertight patent claims. For inventors and companies, the costs and complexities of patents can be prohibitive.

Edge aims to change all that by using AI to automate and streamline every step of the patent process. Evan describes Edge as "the ultimate patent assistant", able to recreate patent claims from basic technology descriptions, suggest areas for improvement, and more. This removes grunt work for practitioners while making high-quality patents more accessible for innovators.

Edge's product offering is centered on a patent editor and assistant app. For example, Edge generated claims mimicking those from the famous PageRank patent solely from a description of the technology, capturing nuances an inventor might have missed. Its AI also suggests ways to strengthen claims, identifies relevant prior art, and more.

Evan sees Edge as revolutionizing how patents are created and managed. For attorneys and agents, it removes the drudgery of claim drafting and prior art searching. For inventors and companies, it makes robust patents far more accessible. He sees patents as a rising tide that can lift all boats when done right. By using technology to democratize access to effective patents, Edge seeks to empower inventors.

Just as the Kitty Hawk Flyer gave rise to modern aviation, robust yet accessible patents can spur the next wave of human ingenuity.