“It’s Never Just Trademarks Anymore”: Insights from INTA’s Presidential Task Force

At the outset of her presidency, 2025 INTA President Elisabeth Stewart Bradley (Bristol Myers Squibb Company, USA), established a Presidential Task Force (PTF) titled Change & Transformation Exploring the Evolution of In-House Teams, the Impact on External Partners, and the Future Opportunities for INTA, designed to focus on the changing role of in-house trademark practitioners and the corresponding impact on their external partners and INTA.

Daniel Zohny (Abion, Switzerland)

The PTF has now published its findings in a report of the same name. The INTA Bulletin spoke with PTF Co-Chairs Christy Susman (USA) and Daniel Zohny (Abion, Switzerland) to discuss the report’s key findings.

According to the report, the role of the “in-house trademark legal practitioner”—or IHP for short—has rapidly evolved. IHPs are now regularly being expected to do more with less, adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools, and expand their role beyond traditional trademark matters. This has also triggered a greater need for external partners to better understand their corporate clients’ business and industry. The report explores how INTA can support members during these structural shifts, including by providing practical resources and vendor assessments.

Christy Susman (USA)

What prompted the PTF to examine the evolving role of the in-house trademark practitioner?
Daniel Zohny (DZ): At the outset of her presidency, 2025 INTA President Elisabeth Stewart Bradley (Bristol Myers Squibb Company, USA) established the PTF, as she was very aware of the seismic shifts in our industry over the past couple of years and wanted to explore how that affected in-house roles, as she comes from in-house. What are the trickle-down effects to the rest of the ecosystem? What does it mean for external partners, and what does it mean for INTA? And how can the Association serve its members and help its members navigate those new environments?

Christy Susman (CS): Elisabeth was really keen to focus on the impact to INTA, not just in terms of how it can support its members, but also how it should do so in the future, given that these changes are ongoing and likely to continue.

What methodology did you use?
CS: When we first learned about this initiative, our initial focus was on the evolving role of the in-house practitioner.

However, as we wanted to understand the broader impact on INTA, it became clear that we also needed to consider how these changes affect external partners. Leaving them out would overlook a significant portion of INTA’s membership, and the report would not be as relevant or insightful.

So, we wanted to focus on all three elements: in-house practitioners, external counsel, and INTA itself. There were three different working groups. One would look at the evolving role of the in-house practitioner, one would look at how that has affected their external partners, and then the third group would look at, if this is the case, what should INTA do next? How should INTA respond to these changes? We left it up to them to determine what was the best way to gather their information and to do their investigation and research.

The in-house practitioner groups relied on surveys, and they surveyed all in-house practitioners. The group looking at the impact on external partners held conversations with law firms and vendors. They conducted hour-long interviews with members and then crafted their portion of the report from those interviews. And then the third group took a broader approach. Their part of the report was actually going to depend in large part on what the other two groups found. But at the same time, they wanted to do their own research, and so they went to some of the INTA committees that they thought would be most affected, including the In-House Practitioners Committee, the Trademark Administrators Committee, the Law Firm Committee, and the Rising Practitioners Committee.

DZ: We wanted to ensure our research included perspectives from a broad range of practitioners. Many of the qualitative interviews tended to feature more senior professionals, but it was important to us that practitioners in the early stages of their career were also heard. Sometimes, these discussions can be dominated by the same, experienced voices, so we made a conscious effort to involve newer members of the profession and encourage them to share their views as well.

Were there any findings that surprised you based on your initial expectations going into the project?
CS: The significance and impact of AI, which I sort of knew, but I was surprised by how much it came up for both external partners and in-house practitioners. And what it meant for them, and then also with respect to how many people on the in-house practitioner side are using it and have been impacted by it.

DZ: Yes, actually the same for me—that the level of adoption for both sides was higher than I expected. Seventy-four percent of in-house practitioners surveyed reported actively using AI tools, with many indicating daily or weekly use.

CS: One of the key insights from the external partners group was that law firms especially highlighted technology—and AI in particular—as a major factor in setting themselves apart when marketing their services to in-house practitioners. Firms noted that if they were not consistently adopting AI at a significant level within their practice, it became much harder to persuade in-house teams or companies to engage their services. In other words, keeping up with AI developments was essential to remain competitive and avoid losing clients.

How has the role of the in-house trademark practitioner expanded most significantly in recent years. What have been the biggest changes?
DZ: Overall, the general theme was “do more with less.” Budgets were shrinking; however, in-house practitioners were being asked to perform more tasks that traditionally were beyond their remit—for example, as well as trademark portfolio management, prosecution, and enforcement, they were being tasked with marketing claims, data protection, drafting different contracts—often because there was no budget for external counsel. Or people who had left were not replaced; very rarely did we hear in interviews that people thought their teams were getting bigger. It was more the opposite.

CS: It used to be that you would have a trademark job, and that was your job—dealing with the company trademarks—and now it’s never just that. There are no just pure trademark jobs anymore. Anytime you see a job now, it’s either trademarks and copyrights, or trademarks, copyrights, and patents, which you really didn’t see very much of in the past. You can’t just be a trademark specialist anymore. You must have a much broader practice than that.

You have to be very much a business partner as well?
CS: Lawyers at outside firms also need to understand the business and its strategy and objectives—its overall goals and plans. They can’t just be the outside person that comes in and assesses matters in a vacuum; they have to have a broader understanding of the business as a whole. In-house practitioners are being asked to do more with less, so then they’re relying on their outside counsel more. But again, they’ve got this constrained budget, so they’re also asking their outside counsel to do more with less as well, right?

DZ: I think mainly the issue for me that came out of all of this is that currently many companies are reluctant to spend the money they should be spending on their IP. The attitude is more like, “We’ll manage somehow.” This attitude actually backfires at some point, but we’re not there. It’s going to take a while until the effects of underfunding IP departments and portfolios are felt and course is corrected.

Why was it important to not just look at in-house practitioners, but external counsel and INTA itself?
DZ: Whatever affects in-house counsel in the end affects the whole ecosystem because there’s a symbiosis between in-house counsel and their external partners. Rarely, will you have in-house practitioners who do everything by themselves. So whatever cuts there are, whatever ramifications there are, these are felt by outside counsel and vendors as well.

CS: If we had just focused on the evolving role of the in-house counsel, that would have still been a really interesting report, but it would have only really been of interest to a subset of the organization’s population. And looking at this more broadly in terms of both the trickle-down effects to external partners and INTA allows the report to have a broader impact.

I feel like INTA is so vital to the trademark and soft IP world. It plays such a significant role that to not look at how this should or could impact the INTA of the future would be missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

How is AI being used in practice?
CS: From my perspective, it seems that they are using AI the most in two ways. First, it’s starting to be used for clearance projects. Although, again, you still have to be so involved and check and double check because there will be technical glitches. Secondly, AI is being used for what it excels at—summarizing large volumes of information and documents—freeing up time and allowing you to do other work.

One striking conclusion is that expanded responsibilities have not been matched by increased budgets or headcount. What risks does this “do more with less” reality pose for brand protection, trademark strategy, and practitioner well-being?
CS: One thing you probably are doing less of is brand protection, because it costs money, it takes time, and you have to pick and choose what you’re going to go after and how you’re going to protect the brand in the ways that are most efficient and effective. You can’t just instigate a broad-based strategy.

It also means that you can’t train people as well, and that you have less time and opportunity for getting specialists in this area because you just don’t have the budget. I think that this feeds into why again INTA becomes so important. INTA can help you narrow down the vendors and tell you who are the most effective and cost-efficient. INTA can help with sessions and webinars and whatever else that helps train your people in ways that you don’t have the time or the resources to do.

DZ: I think these “do more with less” themes will inevitably create strain on practitioners, whether they’re in-house or external. It will mean having to rely on technology to a certain degree to do things. And as Christy mentioned earlier, certain tasks will inevitably either not be completed, or if they are, they may not be done as thoroughly or to the standard they should be. This is simply a consequence of having fewer resources available.

Why do you think people are being asked to do more with less? Is it the global economy, geopolitics, or a cyclical thing?
CS: I think we’re in a period where companies feel like branding is one place where they can save money or not spend money, or they don’t understand the value necessarily, especially smaller and mid-sized companies. But also, we’re seeing layoffs right across the board. So just by virtue of staffing constraints, people are doing more with less. You aren’t seeing huge teams in-house as often anymore. And then that trickles down because a firm isn’t going to have 10 lawyers working on a client’s cases if the client only has three people in-house and is looking at every single bill.

What opportunities does this moment create for INTA to better support its members amid these structural shifts?
DZ: If we talk about vendors, then it’s about showing people what’s out there, because there are so many players by now. Narrowing it down is a huge task: What kind of solutions are out there? Where does it make sense? Where could you use AI to a degree that it really helps you, and that is reliable? But then also, how do you use AI properly? And so on. So, all these things are basically practical resources to help the members navigate all of this.

CS: This question goes to that whole last section of the report, where we list recommendations for INTA. I think there are two ways to look at it: There’s the practical—what can INTA do right now? But then also, how should INTA keep pace? And what should INTA be anticipating in terms of the needs of its members for the future? INTA’s been pretty good about that, and I don’t think that we would have had this report if INTA hadn’t been interested in seeing what we had to say and being responsive to at least some of it.

If readers take away one message from this report, what do you hope it is?
DZ: If there’s one message I’d want readers to take from the report, it’s this: we’ve seen a significant shift—big changes, especially driven by technology. But everyone in the ecosystem is in the same boat. INTA as an organization is there to help and support, and I think that’s really important. The report is a valuable resource; it’s not just impressive, it’s meaningful. People on the INTA Board who read it were genuinely impressed and said, “Wow, this is actually useful. This is something I can use internally as well.” One partner even said, “I can take this and explain some things to my corporate partners.” So, it’s a practical report.

CS: One of the most important aspects was the work that took place between the initial stage—when each group compiled their contributions—and the subsequent phase. After that, a smaller team spent several weeks making sure everything was consistent and made sense as a cohesive whole. We had some excellent writers involved in this process, and I believe their efforts are evident throughout the entire report. I think this demonstrates that the report offers something for everyone.

While the main focus may have been on how the role of the in-house practitioner is changing, this is not a question that can be addressed in isolation. The report is relevant to the INTA organization and all its members, which was perhaps surprising—just how broadly applicable its findings turned out to be.

Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this article, readers are urged to check independently on matters of specific concern or interest. The opinions expressed in this interview are those of the persons being interviewed and do not purport to reflect the views of INTA or its members.

Topics Artificial Intelligence In-House Practitioner In-House Practitioners Presidential Task Force Report