The right sequence: Stephanie Curcio (JD’15) parlays science and law background into leading legal tech platform NLPatent
February 19, 2025
By Kaleigh Rodgers | Photography provided
Intellectual property lawyer turned legal tech founder Stephanie Curcio (JD’15) has always been a trailblazer, if a reluctant entrepreneur.
First in a long line of business owners to graduate high school, Curcio was initially more drawn to pursuing higher education than following in her family’s entrepreneurial footsteps.
Now, as co-founder and chief executive officer of the AI-driven patent research and analysis tool NLPatent, Curcio is helping to remove barriers to innovation by “making patent data and related insights more accessible.”
Acquiring the input
In retrospect, Curcio’s once seemingly circuitous educational journey from international relations to neuroscience and law laid the ideal groundwork for her role today.
“As an entrepreneur, you need a very diverse skill set. You need to be a jack of all trades in a lot of ways. Not to say you don’t also need to master certain skills too, but you need to have some comfort exploring areas of business that may be outside of your typical comfort zone,” said Curcio.
“Having an educational background that was very diverse helped me feel comfortable in the discomfort of navigating areas where I had no idea what I was doing at the beginning.”
Curcio began her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto in international relations but quickly discovered an interest in neuroscience. She completed an Honours Bachelor of Science in neuroscience and then worked in a Parkinson’s research lab but soon felt called to another challenge—law school.
While at Western Law, she realized that her science degree would make her a good candidate for intellectual property (IP) law. Acting as president of the IP club fostered this passion. Beyond finding her legal niche, learning the finer points of contract law from Professor Telfer, and remembering the word utilized “does not compute,” according to Professor Welling, the lifelong relationships gained are what she values most about her time at Western.
“One of the best parts about Western Law is how small our class was compared to some other schools,” said Curcio. “I think back to our small group all the time because that’s where I met my best friends, people that were at my wedding and that their kids are friends with my kid.”
From data to deployment
Curcio was nearly two years into building a successful practice as an associate at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP when NLPatent started to take shape.
As an IP lawyer specializing in patent preparation and prosecution, Curcio was all too familiar with the rigidity and tediousness of the traditional patent search process, historically done by strict keyword matching. Before the height of the AI arms race, she seized the opportunity to harness the technology’s potential to transform IP research.
“When I was introduced to artificial intelligence and its application for patent law, it was a ‘holy crap’ moment. I knew this was clearly the future of our profession,” said Curcio. “I knew I needed to be part of this. So, I joined a friend of mine to start this company, and I haven't looked back since.”
NLPatent, powered by a system of proprietary large language models (LLMs), allows patent professionals and inventors alike to describe any area of technology in natural language, searching hundreds of millions of patents for conceptual similarity to their description.
“It saves hours of time for those patent professionals who are used to doing this kind of research task and has proven to be consistently more accurate, but it also democratizes access to patent data for those who otherwise wouldn’t know where to start,” said Curcio.
“It benefits patent professionals and individuals who have a research or engineering background, or startups that have an idea, product or concept that they’re trying to bring to market. It allows users to see what the landscape looks like in terms of other companies that have similar inventions.”
Impact and continuous improvement
Less than four years since the launch of NLPatent’s current LLM-based patent research platform, the company has achieved significant growth milestones and industry accolades. In 2023 alone, the company secured $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to grow their team—now 12—and support new product development.
At the 2024 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards, Curcio was honoured as a Ones to Watch recipient. For Curcio, receiving this award through peer nomination was an “extraordinary honour.” She appreciated the rare moment for pause and reflection on NLPatent’s impact as she prepares for their continued ascent.
“The goal for the last several years of the business was to create the best AI-based patent research platform in the world, and we believe that we've accomplished that now,” said Curcio. “The future of the company is to repurpose the LLM that we've designed to achieve other outputs across other workflows within the patent process becoming the world’s first end-to-end, AI-first patent research and intelligence platform.”
Last fall, the company launched their second product, NLPatent Monitor, which analyzes each client’s technology space and proactively monitors it for new patent filings pertinent to their domain. Next in cue is a landscape visualization tool that allows users to compare the patent portfolios of various organizations and visually understand how patents are distributed across various technology fields, identifying areas of concentration and elucidating opportunities.
Curcio’s route to co-founding NLPatent presented many valuable lessons, perhaps primary among them that she had the proclivity to navigate the ebbs and flows of entrepreneurship all along. She shares that while her days are long, they’re immensely rewarding. Knowing that her business is providing a tangible benefit to her clients and shaping the future of patent law makes it all worthwhile.
“I work a lot, and I want my son to be really proud of what his mom was able to accomplish in her lifetime,” said Curcio. “The idea of doing something very meaningful that has real impact on patent law, and on an industry, being a harbinger of real change and doing it in a responsible way, that is what really motivates me."
