Burbage Law, PC · Salt Lake City
US patents for artificial intelligence and software.
Burbage Law is the practice of Jon Burbage, a registered patent attorney with roughly twenty years of prosecution experience and an engineering background. The firm prepares and prosecutes patent applications for machine learning, software and connected-systems inventions, argues eligibility, and represents applicants on appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
The problem the firm is built around
Eligibility is where artificial intelligence patents are won or lost.
Two things are true at once right now. The USPTO has moved to make software and machine learning claims easier to allow: the Director’s August 2025 memorandum narrowed the mental-process rejection and put examiners to a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, and the Appeals Review Panel decision in Ex parte Desjardins treated efficiency gains recited in a claim as a practical application.
The Federal Circuit has moved the other way. Recentive Analytics v. Fox, Rensselaer v. Amazon and Dental Monitoring v. Align all hold that applying a known model to a new data environment is abstract, and that better accuracy is not a technical improvement.
An application drafted only to get allowed is not necessarily an application that survives. The work this firm does is drafting one specification that satisfies both standards, and deciding, matter by matter, which fights are worth having in front of the examiner and which belong on appeal.
What the firm does
Prosecution, appeals, portfolios, and the counsel work around them.
Patent preparation and prosecution
Drafting and prosecuting utility applications for machine learning systems, software architectures, distributed and vehicular systems, hardware, and designs.
Includes continuation strategy, examiner interviews, and the 35 U.S.C. § 101 and § 112 record that decides whether a claim holds up later.
Appeals and PTAB practice
Appeal briefs, reply briefs, and oral argument before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board when an examiner will not be moved.
Portfolio management
Running a filing program against a product roadmap and a budget, including foreign filing decisions, annuities, and pruning.
The firm has managed portfolios for companies from single-founder startups through Fortune 500 subsidiaries.
Searching and opinions
Patentability, clearance and freedom-to-operate searching, and intellectual property due diligence for acquisitions and venture financings.
Outside general counsel
For software and artificial intelligence startups: intellectual property strategy, commercial contracts, trade secret and employment matters, and the board-level questions that come with them.
Representative portfolios
Companies whose patent work Jon Burbage has handled.
Across this practice and prior firms, including Fenwick & West. Listing a company identifies work performed; it is not a statement that the company endorses the firm.
- YouTube
- Toyota InfoTechnology Center USA
- Taut AI
- SalesHood
- Pale Blue Earth
- Jaunt VR
- Grokker
- Progress Software
- ShoreTel
- Skullcandy