Posts Tagged: "artificial intelligence"

Everyone understands the importance of monitoring technology trends, competitors and new market entrants to support innovation and portfolio optimization but engaging in competitive landscape analysis takes time — lots of time. In the fast-moving world of technology, those in the day-to-day IP operations end of businesses must find efficient ways to do their jobs better to be able to extract…

A common refrain is that an invention is only as valuable as the patent that protects it. But what happens when you cannot secure the patent? This is a frequent hurdle for inventors seeking to patent products utilizing artificial intelligence (AI). While still in its infancy, at least compared to the lofty expectations of technology enthusiasts, AI has proven integral to driving innovation, but it has also proven equally vexing to fit into the intellectual property legal regime.

The managers of most companies tend to see information security as a Lord of the Rings problem, with the focus on protecting the perimeter. This reflects the popular view. Indeed, from reading headlines about hackers, you might think that cybercrime –malign attacks from evil outsiders – represents the most common way that commercial information is lost. And you would be wrong. It’s not the overlooked vulnerability in the company’s firewall that gets exploited by determined external enemies. Instead, it’s the careless employee who overshares on social media, brags at parties, or leaves a sensitive document in an airport lounge. (Remember traveling on planes?)

Patent systems around the globe offer a quid pro quo that exchanges limited monopolies for disclosures of inventions. Most patent filings list: (1) the inventor(s); and (2) the applicant. The applicant may be an assignee (e.g., company, university, organization, etc.) with rights to seek patent protection on innovations that were identified during employment and that were within a scope of employment. Frequently, the assignee is a current or former employer of the inventor(s). In some jurisdictions (e.g., in the United States), the inventor(s) hold the rights to prosecute the patent application and assert any resulting patent unless and until the inventor(s) assign those rights to another entity (which is frequently done in employment and work?for?hire contracts). In some jurisdictions (e.g., the European Union), it is presumed that the party that applied for a patent holds the rights to the patent application. Thus, it is well-established that non-human entities may be the applicant, assignee, and/or owner of a patent. However, it is not well-established that a non-human entity may be an inventor on a patent applicant. Multiple patent offices (e.g., USPTO, UKIPO, and WIPO) have been considering what the standard in this respect should be.

Reports surfaced last week that Microsoft was granted a patent in December for a way to allow people to have conversations with loved ones after they’re deceased. The tech company a tool that could make it possible to have a virtual conversation via a chatbot with a “past or present entity … such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure.” Further, the patent indicates that the chat would use imagery to “mold a personality alongside a 3D model of its real-life counterpart using letters and images.”

The United States has a clear need for patent reform, but does our legislature understand how to implement that reform? For decades, a shortcoming to our approach to patent reform has been misidentifying the problem as “patent trolls” (more generally, bad actors). Based on a misidentified problem, we have implemented a decades-long policy to systematically weaken patent rights, in an attempt to deter this archetypal bad actor. If we instead use economic principles to address patent reform, we would understand the root problem to our patent system—exorbitantly bloated transactional costs.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing sector of the life sciences industry, with broad-ranging applications in drug discovery, biotechnology, medical diagnosis, clinical trials, precision and personalized medicine and patient monitoring. The recent uptick of AI use in this industry is likely due to the increasing availability of “big data.” AI technologies including machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing can be harnessed to process vast data sets to identify new drug candidates, optimize drug dosing, match patients with drug trials and diagnose diseases. Recognizing this potential, global biopharma companies have invested heavily in AI technology—the AI in life sciences market was valued at USD 1092.44 million in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 3445.60 million by 2025.

The European Patent Office (EPO) issued a press release and 75-page study on December 10, titled “Patents and the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the global technology trends enabling the data-driven economy,” which examined global trends in innovation in fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies. As used in the study, 4IR denotes “the full integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the context of manufacturing and application areas such as personal, home, vehicle, enterprise and infrastructure,” and it marks a “radical step towards a fully data-driven economy.” The study examined international patent families (IPFs), i.e., inventions for which patent applications have been filed in two or more patent offices, related to 4IR worldwide between 2000 and 2018. The study revealed that, between 2010 and 2018, global patent filings for 4IR technologies, including smart connected objects, Internet of Things, Big Data, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), grew at an average annual rate of almost 20%, which is nearly five times faster than the average of all technology fields.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched their INSPIRE (Index of Specialized Patent Information Reports) “database of databases” on November 4, 2020. It provides useful summaries of patent databases to help both novice and expert patent searchers identify the most suitable search system. WIPO’s ultimate goal was to speed up the pace at which innovation takes place. To do this, INSPIRE identifies database features without commenting on any strengths or weaknesses of products. At the time of writing, INSPIRE listed 23 databases, both free and subscription. Content was still being added to the collection and there was scope for more sources to be included.

On October 27, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a report titled “Inventing AI: Tracing the diffusion of artificial intelligence with U.S. patents.” The study showed that artificial intelligence (AI) patent applications increased by more than 100% between 2002 and 2018, from 30,000 to over 60,000, and the overall share of patent applications containing AI subject matter rose from 9% to nearly 16%.

As computing power and large datasets become more available, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in technology is exploding around the world. As an indicator of the impact of AI, private equity investment in AI start-ups attracted 12% of worldwide private equity investments in the first half of 2018, reflecting a four-fold increase from just 3% in 2011, across all major economies. In the United States, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has taken steps to adapt to AI inventions, asking in August of 2019 for public comment on questions ranging from AI inventorship to how to best consider AI elements of inventions. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has also asked similar questions, as part of its conversation on intellectual property (IP) and AI, which published its first Draft Issues Paper on IP policy and AI in December of 2019 and is continuing to hold meetings on the topic.

Jay-Z recently tried to have a YouTube video removed for copyright violations. When YouTuber Voice Synthesis used an open-source program, Tacotron 2, to digitally impersonate Jay-Z’s iconic voice saying different things or singing songs, his entertainment agency Roc Nation LLC claimed that the YouTuber “unlawfully uses an AI to impersonate our client’s voice” and infringe on Jay-Z’s copyright. Roc Nation’s assertion of copyright protection via YouTube’s copyright strike system begs the question: with ever-evolving AI, are voices copyrightable? 

In the latest decision regarding inventions made by the DABUS artificial intelligence machine, the England & Wales High Court has upheld two decisions of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) deeming the UK patent applications to be withdrawn. In a judgment on September 21, Mr Justice Marcus Smith found that all the grounds of appeal filed by the applicant, Dr Thaler, must be dismissed. (Thaler v The Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs And Trade Marks [2020] EWHC 2412 (Pat).) As previously reported by IPWatchdog, the patent applications (for a fractal container and a neural flame) have been filed in many jurisdictions. The applicant claims that they are the autonomous output of the DABUS machine. Like the UKIPO, the EPO and USPTO have published decisions refusing to accept them.

The recently published Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2020 ranks the top global startup ecosystems by metrics including performance, funding, connectedness, talent, and knowledge to highlight the winning startup cities worldwide. In a league of their own, this year’s top five global startup ecosystems have a combined value of $1.5 trillion, 1.7 times the remaining top ecosystems. Silicon Valley maintains the #1 ranking, a position it has held since 2012, when rankings were first released. Meanwhile, New York remains at #2, although now tied with London. And finally, Beijing is at #4, and Boston is at #5. Tel-Aviv and Los Angeles rounded out the top seven. The 2020 analysis includes almost 300 ecosystems, up from 60 in 2018 and 150 in 2019. It ranks the top 40 global startup ecosystems and 100 emerging startup ecosystems.

The USPTO’s recent landmark decision (16/524,350) concluding artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be a named patent inventor perhaps sparked fears of super-robots inventing critical technologies that, alas, receive no patent protection. If an AI identifies new, more efficient battery chemicals, will that new battery be unpatentable? If an AI builds chemical compounds that become the next wonder drug, will that drug-maker…