Multimodal Evidence: How Modern Infringement Analysis Is Evolving Beyond Text

For a long time, infringement detection relied heavily on static materials: PDFs, technical manuals, whitepapers, and written specifications. But in today’s innovation environment where software, semiconductors, connected devices, and digital marketing intersect, product disclosures are becoming more common in videos, interactive demos, product photos, and dynamic web content.

In other words, evidence is no longer confined to text.

As the IP landscape evolves, IP strategy must evolve with it. Tools built for keyword searches and static document review are no longer sufficient. Patent teams now need technology that can analyze video and visuals as evidence.

This is where Patlytics can help.

The Expanding Nature of Patent Evidence

A modern product launch may include:

• A YouTube demo showcasing system functionality
• Marketing videos explaining key features
• Product teardown images
• Interactive web documentation
• Screenshots embedded in help centers

These materials often contain clearer evidence-of-use than formal technical documentation. Yet traditional workflows struggle to incorporate them effectively into litigation-ready claim charts.

The result? Teams either ignore valuable evidence or manually extract and synthesize it, a time-consuming and error-prone process.

As technology becomes more visual and digital, infringement analysis must become multimodal.

Incorporating Video Into Claim Chart Analysis

Many product disclosures now live on platforms like YouTube rather than in printed manuals. Patlytics enables practitioners to parse a YouTube URL directly within the platform.

Automated Transcription

The system automatically extracts the video transcript and incorporates it into claim chart analysis. This allows practitioners to treat spoken product descriptions as searchable, citation-backed evidence.

Searchable Video Data

Transcripts are integrated into the Evidence-of-Use (EOU) search agent, enabling the platform to identify potentially infringing language within video content — content that traditional text crawlers would miss.

Instead of manually scrubbing through timestamps, attorneys can analyze video-based disclosures with the same rigor applied to written materials.

Multimodal Image Analysis: Beyond Keyword Matching

A text-only approach will miss what can be found in visuals.

In hardware, semiconductor, medical device, and life sciences contexts, the “ground truth” of an invention frequently appears in diagrams, product photos, or marketing imagery.

Patlytics incorporates multimodal image analysis, allowing AI to evaluate visuals alongside text-based evidence.

Automated Image Extraction

When crawling the public domain or analyzing prior art, the system automatically extracts multiple images per reference.

Visual Context Alignment

The AI evaluates the surrounding text that describes these images, generating disclosures that connect the visual element to specific claim limitations.

This strengthens partial reads and helps elevate them into high-confidence matches by grounding visual evidence in citation-backed analysis.

Precision Claim Charting with Image Annotations

Modern litigation demands mechanical precision.

To support litigation-ready contentions, Patlytics allows users to interact directly with visual evidence within the workspace.

Red-Lining and Labeling

Practitioners can annotate images by adding arrows, boxes, and labels to highlight specific infringing features. This transforms raw screenshots into structured, courtroom-ready exhibits.

Intelligent Evidence Linking

Each visual annotation is tied to supporting textual citations. The platform references which image and which source material support each limitation, ensuring that visual assertions are defensible and traceable.

This integration reduces ambiguity and preserves evidentiary clarity.

Integrated Across the Entire Workflow

Multimodal capabilities are not isolated features.

They are integrated across the Detection Report, Infringement, and Invalidity modules. Whether teams are:

• Hunting for new evidence-of-use
• Building infringement claim charts
• Analyzing prior art in invalidity workflows

…video transcripts, visual analysis, and image annotations operate within the same structured environment.

This unified workflow ensures that evidence discovered during detection can seamlessly flow into deeper infringement or invalidity analysis without losing context.

Technology Must Grow With Innovation

The complexity of innovation is increasing. Products are more dynamic. Disclosures are more visual. Evidence is more fragmented.

Patent tools must grow accordingly.

Static keyword search and manual PDF review cannot fully capture the modern evidentiary landscape. Multimodal AI allows IP teams to analyze video, images, and text together, reducing research time while strengthening strategic insight. 

And this is only one capability within a broader, AI-native patent lifecycle platform.

From invention disclosure and drafting to infringement detection, invalidity analysis, and portfolio strategy, Patlytics is built to evolve alongside the technologies it analyzes.

The IP landscape is changing. The tools used to navigate it must change as well.

To learn more about Patlytics, book a demo today.