I understand a proper type of technical patent analysis in the approval process is extremely hard and resource consuming, but the way it's handled now is killing anyone not having a legal firm on their speed dial and cash to burn.
What if someone patents these examiners first? :)
"[A] patent is not a hunting license. It is not a reward for the search, but compensation for its successful conclusion" - Brenner v. Manson [1]
In the above case, the inventor discovered a whole class of molecules. The Supreme Court said that you can't patent that because you have to show that each thing you patent can be used for something useful. Basically, the inventor couldn't just claim the whole class of molecules to keep anyone from using them and then figure out what they're good for later.
> In IP geek circles, Manfred is legendary; he's the guy who patented the business practice of moving your e-business somewhere with a slack intellectual property regime in order to evade licensing encumbrances. He's the guy who patented using genetic algorithms to patent everything they can permutate from an initial description of a problem domain – not just a better mousetrap, but the set of all possible better mousetraps.
This is only a problem if the AI is litigious. Surely an AI with true agency would be keep the patent rights to themselves
I, for one, welcome our new Robocop overlords.
Patents already have quite a big fee, but perhaps it should be made larger to prevent this kind of abuse. If the large fee prevents inventors, then perhaps some scheme along the lines of 'The fee is $50 for the first 5 inventions, then $100k per patent after that" might be suitable.