Ryan Abbott

Ryans practice focuses on representing companies in the life science and information technology industries. These range from Fortune 25 enterprises to start-ups, and include biotechnology, medical device, software, and pharmaceutical companies. Ryan assists with disputes, strategy, corporate and transactional matters, as well as with intellectual property rights including patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret protections. His diverse educational and practice background allows him to contribute new perspectives and a business-oriented mindset to both conflicts and transactions. In 2019 and 2021, Managing Intellectual Property magazine named him as one of the fifty most influential people in intellectual property. In 2022, he was named a World IP Review (WIPR) Leader for Patents, one of IAMs Strategy 300-The Worlds Leading IP Strategists, and he was a recipient of Managing Intellectual Propertys Europe Cross-Border Patent Litigation Team of the Year award. In 2023, he was named one of IAMs Strategy 300 Global Leaders and again a World IP Review (WIPR) Leader for Patents. In 2024, he was again named to IAMs Strategy 300 Global Leaders and won a Thought Leadership Award from Mondaq in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution. In 2025, he was a Lexis Nexis Legal Awards Finalist for Case of the Year and ranked by Chambers as a Global Leader in Artificial Intelligence. Ryan is an experienced trial and appellate attorney, having appeared as an advocate and lead counsel in numerous state and federal courts as well as in foreign courts and arbitration proceedings. Ryan most famously managed a major international litigation and prosecution effort involving the first patent applications to disclose inventions generated by an artificial intelligence without a traditional human inventor (AI-Generated Inventions). The applications, filed in eighteen jurisdictions, list the AI as the inventor, and the human owner of the AI, whom Ryan represents, as the patent owner. On June 28, 2021, the Times of London reported that this effort successfully resulted in the worlds first patent for an AI-Generated Invention in South Africa. Ryan is directly responsible for the litigation in the US and UK and managing the other actions. Less famously, Ryan has managed numerous contentious matters ranging from multi-million dollar commercial disputes between large entities, to patent litigation and litigation involving complex technologies such as cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance platforms, to disputes involving wrongful termination and wrongful death. Outside of the firm, Ryan is a mediator and arbitrator with JAMS, Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey School of Law, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is the author of The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, and his legal research has also been published in a variety of leading journals and books. He is regularly featured in media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. Ryan also works as an expert witness which has included testifying in multiple federal courts. One United States District Judge wrote in summary of his testimony on expert issues of medicine and law, [t]he Court found Dr. Abbott to be highly qualified and his testimony to be credible and convincing. Ryan is a physician, attorney (licensed in California and New York), and patent attorney in the United States, as well as a solicitor advocate in England and Wales. He is board-certified by the American Board of Legal Medicine (ABLM). Ryan is a graduate of the University of Surrey School of Law (PhD), Yale Law School (JD), University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (MD), Emperors College (MTOM), and University of California, Los Angeles (BS).