Customer Stories
How Rivian Advances IP Operations to Match the Pace of Innovation with Patlytics
~14K Employees
Automotive / Electric Vehicles
North America
About Rivian
Rivian Automotive, Inc. is an American electric vehicle manufacturer and automotive technology company developing electric vehicles across consumer and commercial segments, supported by a vertically integrated hardware and software platform. As a company at the forefront of automotive innovation, Rivian maintains an extensive and rapidly growing intellectual property portfolio spanning hardware, software, integrated vehicle systems, and manufacturing processes.
As a fast-moving technology company, Rivian’s Legal team has taken a proactive approach to modernizing IP operations, ensuring legal workflows evolve at the same pace as the company’s innovation without lowering the bar on quality, consistency, or confidentiality. Rivian set out to redesign their drafting, comparison, and review processes—shifting attorneys away from mechanical assembly and toward higher-value judgment calls.
As Rivian's technology footprint grew and the volume of IP matters rose, the team looked for secure, enterprise tools that could speed analysis, standardize outputs, and free attorneys to focus on higher-value strategy.
To make smarter portfolio calls and shorten matter turnaround, Rivian piloted a set of AI-powered tools that augment attorney expertise with automation, aimed at making repeatable, defensible processes easier to run at scale. Rivian’s integration of AI-powered tools into core legal/IP workflows reflects the same spirit of innovation that defines its vehicles.
Problem
Rivian’s IP function had to scale detail-intensive legal work while maintaining high standards. Manual drafting and structured document assembly produced accurate results, but the process was slow and increasingly difficult to sustain in a fast-moving hardware and software environment.
Comparative reviews required careful, element-by-element alignment of requirements to internal and public sources. Locating those sources, placing citations, and assembling structured tables consumed significant attorney time and often became bottlenecks. Research-heavy steps slowed reviews, increased iteration cycles, and pulled attorneys into repetitive fact gathering rather than substantive analysis.
Solution
Rivian adopted Patlytics to bring targeted automation into an attorney-in-the-loop workflow, streamlining document preparation and the creation of standardized materials for comparative reviews, while keeping quality controls in place.
Using Patlytics, Rivian’s Legal team turns raw inputs into organized, review-ready drafts. The platform proposes outlines, aligns terminology, and generates structured sections that attorneys can edit and refine. This allows stakeholders to start from a coherent legal framework instead of a blank page, reducing rework and accelerating early-stage alignment.
In invention disclosure and patent drafting workflows, Patlytics can infer a core inventive concept from limited inputs and expand it into a legally usable structure, which attorneys then refine through expert review.
"What surprised us most was how quickly the system grasped the core idea and gave us a solid legal structure to refine."
— Rivian Legal
The rollout was strategic, intentional, and deliberately measured. Rivian began with specific use cases, gathered attorney feedback, and iterated alongside the Patlytics team to ensure the workflows aligned with internal processes rather than forcing changes to established standards. This approach allowed Rivian to modernize repeatable IP workflows while preserving attorney oversight at every stage.
Results
With the Patlytics platform handling formatting, collation, and initial organization, Rivian’s attorneys and subject matter experts now spend more time on analysis and strategy, and less time on mechanical work.
From short prompts, the system reliably surfaces core ideas and expands them into coherent, legally useful frameworks. This has reduced clarifying iterations, improved consistency across structured IP materials, and sped alignment across teams, all while preserving attorney oversight and control.
"Putting attorney judgment first and letting targeted automation handle the grunt work helps us move faster without lowering our standards."
— Rivian Legal
Conclusion
By pairing attorney expertise with AI-enabled workflows from Patlytics, Rivian accelerated key IP tasks, improved consistency, and created capacity for higher-value legal work without sacrificing rigor, confidentiality, or standards.
The result is a modern IP operating model designed to scale with Rivian’s pace of innovation—demonstrating how forward-thinking legal teams can adopt advanced technology while preserving expert judgment and control.
As Rivian continues to evolve its IP strategy, Patlytics has become a trusted component in enabling faster, more consistent, and defensible patent workflows.
For fast-growing companies seeking to modernize their IP operations while maintaining the highest standards of quality and control, Rivian's success with Patlytics provides a compelling blueprint. Rivian’s approach reflects a broader shift toward modern, technology-enabled legal operations, where attorneys lead strategy and automation supports execution. Rivian is proving that fast-growing companies don't have to choose between speed and rigor, and setting a new standard for how modern in-house IP teams operate.
If your IP team is exploring ways to improve the speed and efficiency of patent workflows — from drafting to infringement analysis to invalidity analysis and beyond — Patlytics can help. Contact us to learn more.
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