IP Monday Law Blog 

As intellectual property lawyers, we spend a lot of time talking about originality, distinctiveness, novelty, non-obviousness, and scope. These are fundamental principles in the IP field. They matter, and they always will. But, in practice, there is another filter that often determines whether intellectual property creates value:

Can someone understand it quickly enough to care?

The audience for your intellectual property is rarely just a patent examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office: it is a judge deciding a motion; a jury seeing and learning about the technology for the first time; an investor trying to assess risk and upside in a limited window; a valuation expert assigning numbers to something that may or may not feel real yet; or a potential licensee deciding whether to engage or move on. None of those people are looking for a technical deep dive. They’re trying to understand something quickly—and make a decision.

Clarity, in that sense, becomes a force multiplier. The easier something is to understand, the more contexts it can operate in. A clear patent is easier to enforce, easier to license, easier to value, and easier to explain in a boardroom.

A complicated or hard-to-follow patent may still be perfectly valid, but its usefulness starts to narrow—not because the rights are weaker, but because the story is harder to tell (and sell). And if the story is hard to tell (and sell), it is even harder to repeat. That matters more than most people think.

We can see this play out in a simple example: Imagine two patents covering similar functionality in a consumer product. One describes “a lid for a beverage container that automatically closes when released to reduce contamination and spills.” You can picture it immediately. You can explain it in a sentence. You can point to a competing product and say, “that is it.”

Now compare that easy, straightforward description to a description that reads: “a selectively actable closure assembly comprising a pivotally coupled occlusion member configured to transition between a first and second position in response to a biasing mechanism.” It may be technically precise and legally sound, but it introduces friction and requires the reader to expend time and effort to understand what the description is describing. Try walking a jury through that in only a few minutes. Try using it in a pitch meeting or try getting a business executive to make a licensing decision based on that description alone. One version moves, the other stalls and obfuscates. That difference—more than anything—is about friction.

This is where the litigation perspective brings the point into sharper focus. Our intellectual property litigators, such as Alexander S. Rusek, often emphasize in both his practice and in teaching trial advocacy, that cases frequently come down to who tells the better story. And "better" rarely means more complicated. More often, it means the story that is easiest to understand, easiest to remember, and most consistent with the evidence.

A common mistake is overwhelming the audience with details. Jurors can become lost in the trees when what they need is help seeing the forest. Rather, the story must be able to be broken down into digestible and intuitive sections. And, that should be done in plain language–the language that people actually process and use in everyday life. It means telling a story that can be followed, internalized, and ultimately believed.

Litigation has a way of exposing what matters. Judges are working through crowded dockets and may have little or no exposure to intellectual property cases. Juries are encountering unfamiliar technology in real time. Neither group is there to be impressed by the technical achievements that the intellectual property represents—they are trying to understand what happened and why it matters. The side that reduces friction and presents a version of events that feels clear and coherent, is often the side that has the advantage before ever entering a courtroom.

That same principle also carries well beyond the courtroom. The most effective legal arguments are the ones a judge can follow without effort. The strongest business strategies are the ones that can be communicated clearly across a team and executed. The best pitch decks don’t require translation into plain language. In each case, clarity does not oversimplify—it removes barriers to action.

There is also a cost to getting this wrong. When something is hard to understand, it creates drag. Deals take longer. Decisions get delayed, risk feels higher than it actually is. Value gets discounted, not because the underlying asset lacks merit, but because it lacks accessibility. In a world where attention is limited and decisions are made quickly, that distinction has real consequences.

A useful way to pressure-test this is simple: can you explain why something matters to a smart non-expert in under a minute? Trial lawyers have long understood this concept. If a juror cannot understand the theory of your case, it becomes difficult for them to embrace it. The same principle applies to intellectual property. If the value proposition cannot be communicated clearly, its value may never be fully appreciated.

If it is not clear, it is worth stepping back and re-evaluating strategy. The substance does not necessarily need to change, but the way it is expressed, framed, and ultimately claimed may need to be sharpened. If you do not define your story clearly, someone else will—and they may not do it in your favor. Ultimately, this is not about dumbing things down, but rather it is about making sure the value you have created can actually be seen, understood, and used with clarity.

In intellectual property cases – and in litigation more broadly, complexity can be impressive, particularly to the people who created it. But it is clarity is what gets understood, is what gets believed, and is what gets enforced. And ultimately, clarity is what gets paid. The gap between the two examples above is where a lot of value is either captured—or quietly lost.

If you have questions about protecting, explaining, or enforcing your intellectual property rights, please reach out to the attorneys at Foster Swift Collins & Smith, P.C.