When you hear attorney and tech businesswoman Lavinia Meliti addressing delegates at a conference, her passionate Italian roots are as evident as her enthusiasm. Describing herself as a ‘tech enthusiast on a mission to empower innovation in emerging technologies,’ Lavinia holds two Juris Doctor degrees from Europe and the US. She previously worked as an attorney, specialising in Intellectual Property (IP) and Competition Law matters. The switch – from practising in Miami as an attorney to using her legal skills in the tech business – stems from her interest in the intersection between business, digital tech, and law throughout both her academic and professional career.
“I wanted to get directly involved in the process of developing new business models and evolving the intellectual property landscape to support the digital revolution,” she explains.
This Miami resident is Global Head of Business Development at IPwe, ‘the world’s first global innovation platform leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology,’ where she leads strategy and execution of business initiatives worldwide.
Passionate about intellectual property and increasing its accessibility to promote innovation in emerging technology,’ working at IPwe seems a perfect fit for Lavinia, who contradicts the popular notion that ‘all lawyers are boring.’
IPwe Connects Fortune 500 companies with innovators and SMEs across the blockchain and metaverse ecosystems, offering information and tools to help clients identify, research, evaluate, and transact their patents.
Addressing delegates during the North American Bitcoin Conference earlier this year, Lavinia described innovation as ‘the calling card of the future’, adding that ‘at about two trillion dollars globally, the pace of innovation today is faster than at any other point in human history.’
IPwe aims to remove barriers to innovation like discovery and transaction costs for SMEs and start-ups.
“We have built Smart Pools in emerging tech areas like metaverse, blockchain, and barcode technologies early in the adoption cycle. These encourage innovation and cooperation by making patents in these areas easily accessible,” Lavinia explains.
Through patent tokenization, tech leaders can make their patents available to innovators, who can then license them with ease and transparency.
Lavinia also serves as Vice-President of the VR/AR Association in the Miami Chapter, which aims to foster and promote collaboration between companies in the Metaverse.
She asserts that ‘because innovation affects every one of our lives by improving the technologies we use, everyone can benefit from living in a world of breathtaking digital transformation.’
The Metaverse, in her view, is ‘a digital world that mirrors our society in all its complexity yet adds a whole new dimension of opportunity for connection and growth, both for individuals and businesses.’
Lavinia believes the global Covid pandemic had a surprising upside, because it made the adoption of the Metaverse much easier.
“The world largely spent around two years in and out of lockdown, resulting in people moving most of their lives online. Businesses across many sectors like gaming, entertainment, social media, retail, and real estate took advantage of this digital world to increase their revenue opportunities in the metaverse economy, or metanomy.”
Her observation over the last year is that many companies went from being apprehensive about web3 to investing in digital products and accepting digital currencies. She cites Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Nike, MBW, and CocaCola that have created NFT products to engage customers and cultivate loyalty, while Samsung, Adidas, and Miller Lite have bought land in the Metaverse and are offering their customers a virtual experience.
The Metaverse, Lavinia remarks, has taken the global village of the internet ‘to a whole new level’ by creating an immersive digital world we can access simply through our devices.
“In the next five years, socializing, shopping, consuming entertainment, accessing services, investing, and owning property can all happen in a virtual world.”
Yet, she’s aware that both technical and social barriers remain before everyone accepts this new world, saying, ‘anything new takes time to garner the necessary social understanding and familiarity.’
Collaborative innovation can address technical barriers – such as how long it takes to make transactions, the need for crypto wallets, energy inefficiency, user interface limitations, and lack of infrastructure.
Lavinia is excited that innovation holds endless possibilities in the future. Democratizing IP by reducing the cost of market research and negotiation is important to her, which explains her passion for her work at IPwe and why she’s inspired by what can be achieved in a democratized landscape.
“IPwe’s platform and Smart Pools using AI and Blockchain technology have removed the inefficiencies of human-reliant IP processes, making the IP process more transparent, affordable, efficient, and secure. It’s also ensured that start-ups and SMEs can innovate and adopt emerging technologies without barriers.”
