AI Procurement for Patent Counsel: Navigating the Customer Contracting Toolkit for B2B AI Services

This panel brings together IP practitioners from in-house and law firm roles to unpack the Customer Contracting Toolkit for B2B AI Services, a model agreement framework developed by the IPO AI, Data & Emerging Technologies Committee. Moderated by Shruti Costales, founder of Shruti Law PLLC and co-author of the Toolkit, the discussion will move through the provisions most relevant to patent counsel — from model IP ownership and Customer-Derived Improvements to Training Data infringement warranties and the indemnification cascade. Panelists bring perspectives from both sides of the negotiating table, giving attendees a grounded, practical view of how these provisions play out in real transactions.

Topics will include:

• Who owns what in an AI transaction — unpacking the ownership framework for AI Model weights, Customer-Specific Customizations, Customer-Derived Improvements, and Outputs, and why the distinctions between them matter for patent and trade secret strategy
• Training Data infringement risk — what the current litigation landscape means for Customer's exposure, how to evaluate Provider warranties on Training Data provenance, and where indemnification language tends to break down in negotiation
• Delivery mode and license structure — why SaaS, API, and on-premises deployments require fundamentally different legal frameworks, and the practical consequences of getting the license structure wrong
• Security and privacy obligations specific to AI — how AI expands the traditional security risk profile beyond what standard SaaS clauses address, and what counsel needs to add to protect against prompt injection, model inversion, embedding leakage, and cross-customer contamination
• Negotiating fallbacks in practice — where Providers push back hardest, which concessions are acceptable and which are not, and how to use the Toolkit's fallback positions to reach a defensible middle ground without giving up core Customer protections

Panelists will speak candidly from their own experience negotiating AI procurement agreements, giving attendees — whether in-house or at a firm — contract language and negotiating strategies they can put to work immediately.