“A car is an internet of things every bit as much or more as a smart home,” Paul M. Schoenhard said on this week’s Drinks With The Deal podcast. As a result, said Schoenhard and Nicole M. Jantzi, there is the possibility for the kind of litigation that the smartphone industry saw in the years around 2010.

Jantzi and Schoenhard, who are intellectual property partners at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in Washington and are married, said that as private equity firms have become more active in technology, they’ve been more willing to explore monetizing patent portfolios that their portfolio companies may no longer need.

While the two started their careers as patent litigators at Fish & Neave LLP in the early 2000s, they developed a much broader practice.

“We are in an era where branding has every bit as much driving force as underlying patent assets, and so our clients are increasingly looking to us to help them develop an overall IP strategy to more comprehensively view their company rather than looking to a set of patent lawyers, a set of copyright lawyers and a set of trademark lawyers,” Schoenhard said.

Here’s the podcast with Jantzi and Schoenhard:

More podcasts from The Deal are available on iTunes, Spotify and on TheDeal.com.