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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

> First, U.S. courts have severely restricted what types of computer-implemented and biotech-related inventions can be protected under U.S. patent law.6 Critical AI and biotech-related inventions have been denied patent protection since 2010.7 Facing uncertainty in obtaining and retaining patent protection, inventors pursue trade secret protection. Trade secrets do not readily promote innovation markets, because trade secrets, unlike patents, do not contribute to accessible technical knowledge in the public domain.8 While these impacts might not be immediate, the long-term effects on AI and other emerging technology developments and competitiveness are concerning.9

Looks like it's coming out solidly in the pro-software-patent camp.

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That's unfortunate. To rebuild our domestic manufacturing capability we should loosen on intellectual property.

Why? What would loosening IP do in this regard?

In its present state the patent/license system does more to gum up innovation than it does to help inventors. This is due to the extreme asymmetry between individual inventors (who have almost no power to enforce IP against big companies) and big companies (who have a virtually unlimited war chest of liberally granted patents that are mainly used to squash competition from smaller businesses.)

The options for fixing it are A. Reform the entire judicial system so that one guy can take on a foreign multinational and win if he's right, and also get the patent office to stop granting trivial or overly broad patents to protect small businesses from abusers, or B. Weaken IP law so that we get fewer of the abuses, under the theory that we aren't getting the benefits now anyways. (If a system promises benefits but delivers abuses, it can be advantageous and much more practical to get rid of the system, even if reforming it would be better.)

So the solution to a broken system is to break the system in an additional different way?

I am wondering, if AI and biotech inventions are denied, why are there so many AI parents given to Google recently?

Hi ilaksh,

Google has a significant patent attorney preparation and prosecution team on its payroll, and they can afford to draft patent applications which have all the enablement and "possession of the invention" text in their patent applications. At the intersection of biotech and AI, this is a significant hurdle to overcome for the solo or bootstrap inventor/innovator.

Applying algorithms to a variety of biotech platforms (genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), mutation, etc.) is a real challenge for a number of reasons. First, the difference amongst us human beings (a difference in phenotype) is a real challenge for algos to train on, and is dependent upon the underlying datasets or combination of datasets. Second, it's difficult to integrate the algos into existing Hospital Information Systems (HIS).

You can check out these following links for some explanation on this technology convergence and patent prosecution strategy:

https://torreypineslaw.com/convergence-technology-patent-att...

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/01/27/artificial-intelligenc...

https://www.thepharmaletter.com/article/artificial-intellige...

Google has solved some of these problems, whether from its dominant capital position or deep patent prep/pros team, so can successfully obtain granted patents in this technical field.

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