Digitalized Invention, Decentralized Patent System

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-144
Author(s):  
Feroz Ali
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Digital Photography ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Patent Office ◽  
Working Models ◽  
System P ◽  
History Of

Throughout the history of patent law, the manner of representation of invention influenced the process of the patent office in prosecuting them. This chapter traces how changes in the representation of the invention—from material to textual to digital—transformed patent prosecution. Early inventions were represented by working models, the materialized invention that needed little or no examination by the patent office, as they were the inventions themselves. Substantive examination became necessary when the representation of the invention shifted from material to textual, the point in history where the invention became textualized and represented by the patent specification, the written document that encompassed the invention. The textualized invention, apart from effecting critical changes in patent prosecution, centralized the operations of the patent office. With the adoption of new technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), the manner of representation of invention will undergo yet another change resulting in the further evolution of patent prosecution. Like digital photography which changed the representation of images by radically changing the backend process, the digitalized invention will change the backend process of the patent office, ie, patent prosecution. The most significant systemic consequence of the digitalization of the invention will be the decentralization of patent system.

Constructing an Objective History of the U.S. Patent System

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
System P ◽  
Injunctive Relief ◽  
History Of ◽  
Patent Applications ◽  
The U.S

This chapter presents a history of the U.S. patent system based on quantitative and qualitative evidence relating to patentees’ expectations that courts will uphold the validity of contested patents, find infringement, and award injunctive relief against infringing parties. Additionally, this chapter describes historical changes in antitrust law that have impacted patentees’ ability to enter into licensing and other patent-dependent transactions. Based on these features of patent law and antitrust-related patent law, supplemented by background institutional developments, the history of the U.S. patent system during 1890–2006 consists of three periods: (i) a strong-patent, weak-antitrust period from 1890 through the mid-1930s; (ii) a weak-patent, strong-antitrust period from the late 1930s through the 1970s; and (iii) a strong-patent, weak-antitrust period from the early 1980s through 2006. Historical trends in the volume of patent applications by U.S. inventors are consistent with this division of U.S. patent history.

AI Narratives

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imaginative Thinking ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.

scholarly journals The Surprising Resilience of the Patent System

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lemley
Keyword(s):  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Legislative Reform ◽  
System P ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
New Business ◽  
Patent Applications

The patent system seems in the midst of truly dramatic change. The lasttwenty years have seen the rise of a new business model – the patent troll– that grew to become a majority of all patent lawsuits. They have seen asignificant expansion in the number of patents granted and a fundamentalchange in the industries in which those patents are filed. They have seenthe passage of the most important legislative reform in the last sixtyyears, a law that reoriented legal challenges to patents away from courtsand toward the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). And they have seenremarkable changes in nearly every important legal doctrine, from patenteligibility to obviousness to infringement to remedies.These changes have prompted alarm in a number of quarters. From the 1990sto the 2000s, as the number of patents and patent troll suits skyrocketed,technology companies and academics worried about the “crisis” in the patentsystem – a crisis of overprotection that might interfere with rather thanpromote innovation. By 2015, as patent reform took effect and the SupremeCourt undid many of the Federal Circuit’s expansions of patent rights, itwas patent owners who were speaking of a crisis in the patent system – acrisis of underprotection that might leave innovators without adequateprotection. Depending on one’s perspective, then, the sky seems to havebeen falling on the patent system for some time.Despite the undeniable significance of these changes in both directions,something curious has happened to the fundamental characteristics of thepatent ecosystem during this period: very little. Whether we look at thenumber of patent applications filed, the number of patents issued, thenumber of lawsuits filed, the patentee win rate in those lawsuits, or themarket for patent licenses, the data show very little evidence that patentowners and challengers are behaving differently because of changes in thelaw. The patent system, then, seems surprisingly resilient to changes inthe law. This is a puzzle. In this article, I document this phenomenon andgive some thought to why the fundamental characteristics of the patentsystem seem resistant to even major changes in patent law and procedure.The results pose some profound questions not only for efforts at patentreform but for the role of the patent system in society as a whole.

An Organizational History of the U.S. Patent System

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-114
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chains ◽  
Government Funding ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Organizational History ◽  
System P ◽  
Contractual Relationships ◽  
History Of ◽  
Firm Structures ◽  
The U.S

This chapter presents a novel organizational history of the U.S. patent system during 1890–2006. Based on a division of U.S. patent history into two strong-patent/weak-antitrust periods (1890 to mid-1930s and 1980s to 2006) and one weak-patent/strong-antitrust period (late 1930s to 1970s), it describes evidence relating to concurrent changes in the mix of organizational forms used to structure the innovation and commercialization process. Both strong-IP periods are characterized by substantially disaggregated supply chains in which innovators enter into financing, licensing, and other contractual relationships with third parties to execute the commercialization process. By contrast, the weak-IP regime that prevailed during the postwar decades principally supported innovation by large integrated firms, often supplemented by extensive government funding. Historical organizational trends support the hypothesis that weak-IP regimes shift innovation and commercialization activities toward integrated firm structures, while strong-IP regimes sustain organizationally diverse innovation ecosystems that support a range of integrated and disintegrated structures.

THE EUROPEAN PATENT: AN OLD AND VEXING PROBLEM

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 917-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Pila
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
European Patent ◽  
International Patent ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Rich History ◽  
Vexing Problem

AbstractIn December 2012, the European Parliament supported the creation of a European patent with unitary effect. For the next year at least, the international patent community will be on the edge of its proverbial seat, waiting to see whether the proposal becomes a reality. If it does, it will be a significant event in both the long and rich history of patent law, and in the equally rich and understudied history of attempts to create a European patent system. In this article I consider the three post-war European patent initiatives of the most direct and enduring relevance in that regard with a view to answering the following questions. First, what drove them? Second, what issues confronted them? And third, how were those issues resolved and with what ultimate effect? In the concluding section I relate the discussion back to the present by offering some remarks on the current European patent proposal in light of the same.

scholarly journals In Search of a Unifying Concept in Human Diseases

Diseases ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
James Trosko
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Precision Medicine ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Genome Project ◽  
Human Diseases ◽  
Therapeutic Benefits ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biological Discovery ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Human Genome Project

Throughout the history of biological/medicine sciences, there has been opposing strategies to find solutions to complex human disease problems. Both empirical and deductive approaches have led to major insights and concepts that have led to practical preventive and therapeutic benefits for the human population. The classic definitions of “science” (to know) has been paired with the classic definition of technology (to do). One knew more as the technology developed, and that development was often based on science. In other words, one could do more if science could improve the technology. In turn, this made possible to know more science with improved technology. However, with the development of new technologies of today in biology and medicine, major advances have been made, such as the information from the Human Genome Project, genetic engineering techniques and the use of bioinformatic uses of sophisticated computer analyses. This has led to the renewed idea that Precision Medicine, while raising some serious ethical concerns, also raises the expectation of improved potential of risk predictions for prevention and treatment of various genetically and environmentally influenced human diseases. This new field Artificial Intelligence, as a major handmaiden to Precision Medicine, is significantly altering the fundamental means of biological discovery. However, can today’s fundamental premise of “Artificial Intelligence”, based on identifying DNA, as the primary nexus of human health and disease, provide the practical solutions to complex human diseases that involve the interaction of those genes with the broad spectrum of “environmental factors”? Will it be “precise” enough to provide practical solutions for prevention and treatments of diseases? In this “Commentary”, with the example of human carcinogenesis, it will be challenged that, without the integration of mechanistic and hypothesis-driven approaches with the “unbiased” empirical analyses of large numbers of data, the Artificial Intelligence approach with fall short.

scholarly journals Do Patents Have Gender?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Burk
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Scientific Standards ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Patent law offers a set of exclusive rights to innovators, awarding such rights for inventions that meet certain statutory criteria. The statutory requirements for invention incorporate purportedly objective criteria against which new technologies are measured for patent eligibility. For example, inventions are assessed from the perspective of the fictional “person having ordinary skill in the art” (PHOSITA) for compliance with the statutory requirements of obviousness, enablement, and written description.Feminist scholarship has previously questioned representations of objectivity, as purportedly neutral criteria may be oriented toward a rational, masculine default that is in fact anything but neutral. Previous scholarship has disclosed such bias in fields including both the legal and scientific standards that intersect in the patent statute. These analytical tools may yield similar insights when applied to patents. In particular, feminist insights regarding situated knowledge may prove to be helpful in understanding the inherent assumptions of the patent system, as well as the effects of such assumptions.

Artificial Intelligence Designated as Inventor – An Analysis of the Recent EPO Case Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (9) ◽  
pp. 918-924
Author(s):  
Martin Stierle
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
European Patent Office ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Patent Office ◽  
Patent Applications ◽  
Artificial Intelligence Systems

Abstract This paper will focus on the issue of designating artificial intelligence systems as inventors in the current framework of European patent law. Most recently, the European Patent Office rejected two patent applications which indicated a machine called DABUS as the inventor of the claimed subject-matter. The paper will analyse the grounds of the decisions in detail, thereby reflecting on the current approach of the European Patent Office to such designations and on the concept of inventorship within the European patent system in general.

scholarly journals The Growing Complexity of the United States Patent System

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lemley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Random Sample ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Patent System ◽  
United States Patent ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
System P ◽  
States Patent

In this Article, we compare a data set of 1000 U.S. patents issued between1996 and 1998 to a similarly random sample of 1000 patents issued twentyyears earlier, between 1976 and 1978. By studying the differences betweenthe groups, we can get a clear picture of how the patent system has changedover time. The results are dramatic. By almost any measure - subjectmatter, time spent in prosecution, number of prior art references cited,number of claims, number of continuation applications filed, number ofinventors - the patents issued in the late 1990s are more complex thanthose issued in the 1970s. While some of these effects are attributable tothe patenting of new technologies like biotechnology and software, unknownin the early 1970s, the increase in complexity is robust even across areasof technology. Further, the patent system in the 1990s is moreheterogeneous than it was in the 1970s. There are far greater differencesby area of technology and by nationality in how patents are beingprosecuted in the 1990s than there were in the 1970s. We explore a numberof possible explanations for these results, and discuss the policyimplications of the lack of uniformity that now characterizes our patentsystem.

Historical Developments

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip W. Grubb ◽  
Peter R. Thomsen ◽  
Tom Hoxie ◽  
Gordon Wright
Keyword(s):  
Patent Protection ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
System P ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Uk

This chapter describes historical developments in patent systems and patent law. It highlights key developments in the UK from 1800–2014, in the US from 1790–2014, in other industrialized countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Japan), and in developing countries. The final section discusses international developments such as the Paris Convention, the European Patent Convention, the Unitary Patent system in Europe, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the TRIPs Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Patent Law Treaty, the London Agreement, and the Substantive Patent Law Treaty. These developments, which have generally acted to strengthen patent protection, did not simply happen of their own accord; political, diplomatic, and industry lobbying activities have played a larger role than any objective analysis of the economic and social benefits of the patent system.

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