Law Commons^™

A Compulsory Solution To The Machine Problem: Recognizing Artificial Intelligence As Inventors In Patent Law, Cole G. Merritt

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already disrupting and will likely continue to disrupt many industries. Despite the role AI already plays, AI systems are becoming increasingly powerful. Ultimately, these systems may become a powerful tool that can lead to the discovery of important inventions or significantly reduce the time required to discover these inventions. Even now, AI systems are independently inventing. However, the resulting AI-generated inventions are unable to receive patent protection under current US patent law. This unpatentability may lead to inefficient results and ineffectively serves the goals of patent law.

To embrace the development and power of AI, Congress …

Bilski And The Information Age A Decade Later, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

In the years from State Street in 1999 to Alice in 2014, legal scholars vigorously debated whether patents should be used to incentivize the invention of business methods. That attention has waned just as economists have produced important new research on the topic, and just as artificial intelligence and cloud computing are changing the nature of business method innovation. This chapter rejoins the debate and concludes that the case for patent protection of business methods is weaker now than it was a decade ago.

A Compulsory Solution To The Machine Problem, Cole G. Merritt

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already disrupting and will likely continue to disrupt many industries. Despite the role AI already plays, AI systems are becoming increasingly powerful. Ultimately, these systems may become a powerful tool that can lead to the discovery of important inventions or significantly reduce the time required to discover these inventions. Even now, AI systems are independently inventing. However, the resulting AI-generated inventions are unable to receive patent protection under current US patent law. This unpatentability may lead to inefficient results and ineffectively serves the goals of patent law.

To embrace the development and power of AI, Congress …

Artificial Intelligence Inventions & Patent Disclosure, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) has attracted significant attention and has imposed challenges for society. Yet surprisingly, scholars have paid little attention to the impediments AI imposes on patent law’s disclosure function from the lenses of theory and policy. Patents are conditioned on inventors describing their inventions, but the inner workings and the use of AI in the inventive process are not properly understood or are largely unknown. The lack of transparency of the parameters of the AI inventive process or the use of AI makes it difficult to enable a future use of AI to achieve the same end state. While …

Symbols, Systems, And Software As Intellectual Property: Time For Contu, Part Ii?, Timothy K. Armstrong

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The functional nature of computer software underlies two propositions that were, until recently, fairly well settled in intellectual property law: first, that software, like other utilitarian articles, may qualify for patent protection; and second, that the scope of copyright protection for software is comparatively limited. Both propositions have become considerably shakier as a result of recent court decisions. Following Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), the lower courts have invalidated many software patents as unprotectable subject matter. Meanwhile, Oracle America v. Google Inc., 750 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2014) extended far more expansive copyright protection …

Artificial Intelligence In Health Care: Applications And Legal Implications, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly moving to change the healthcare system. Driven by the juxtaposition of big data and powerful machine learning techniques—terms I will explain momentarily—innovators have begun to develop tools to improve the process of clinical care, to advance medical research, and to improve efficiency. These tools rely on algorithms, programs created from healthcare data that can make predictions or recommendations. However, the algorithms themselves are often too complex for their reasoning to be understood or even stated explicitly. Such algorithms may be best described as “black-box.” This article briefly describes the concept of AI in medicine, including …

Toward A Direct Functional Relationship Requirement For Claims To Software Encoded On A Computer-Readable Storage Medium: Rethinking In Re Beauregard In Response To The Uspto's Interim Guidelines Regarding The Patentability Of Data Signal Claims, Elizabeth A. Richardson

Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

How Oracle Erred: Functionality, Useful Articles, And The Future Of Computer Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In Oracle v. Google (2015), the Federal Circuit addressed whether the " method header " components of a dominant computer program were uncopyrightable as " merging " with the headers' ideas or function. Google had copied the headers to ease the ability of third-party programmers to interact with Google's Android platform. The court rebuffed the copyrightability challenge; it reasoned that because the plaintiff's expression might have been written in alternative forms, there was no " merger " of idea and expression. But the Oracle court may have been asking the wrong question. In Lotus v. Borland (1995), the owner of …

Software Patentability After Prometheus, Joseph Holland King

Georgia State University Law Review

This Note examines the history of patentability of abstract ideas and the tests that courts have used to make the determination of whether an invention incorporating an abstract idea is patentable. Part I provides a history of the four seminal cases related to patentable subject matter, as well as some more recent on point decisions. Part II changes focus to the various tests and factors that have been used by the courts, exploring the history of each, discussing the treatment by the Supreme Court, and determining the strengths and weaknesses of each. Based on the discussion in Part II, Part …

Aftermarketfailure: Windows Xp's End Of Support, Andrew Tutt

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

After 12 years, support for Windows XP will end on April 8, 2014. So proclaims a Microsoft website with a helpful clock counting down the days. "What does this mean?" the website asks. "It means you should take action." You should "migrate to a current supported operating system - such as Windows 8.1 - so you can receive regular security updates to protect [your] computer from malicious attacks." The costs of mass migration will be immense. About 30% of all desktop PCs are running Windows XP right now. An estimated 10% of the U.S. government's computers run Windows XP, including …

Structure From Nothing And Claims For Free: Using A Whole-System View Of The Patent System To Improve Notice And Predictability For Software Patents, Holly K. Victorson

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

No uniform or customary method of disclosure for software patents is currently employed by inventors. This Note examines the issues that develop from software patent claims disclosed at various levels of abstraction, and the difficulties encountered by courts and the public when investigating the contours of the software patent space. While the courts have placed some restrictions on the manner in which software inventions are claimed, they are easily bypassed by clever patent applicants who desire to claim the maximum scope of their inventions. In the long run, however, a large “patent thicket” of overlapping and potentially overbroad inventions will …

23andme Inc.: Patent Law And Lifestyle Genetics, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

The venture, 23andMe Inc., raises a host of issues in respect of patent law, policy, and practice in respect of lifestyle genetics and personalised medicine. The company observes: ‘We recognize that the availability of personal genetic information raises important issues at the nexus of ethics, law, and public policy’. 23andMe Inc. has tested the boundaries of patent law, with its patent applications, which cut across information technology, medicine, and biotechnology. The company’s research raises fundamental issues about patentability, especially in light of the litigation in Bilski v. Kappos, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. and Association for Molecular Pathology …

The Genographic Project: Traditional Knowledge And Population Genetics, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

This article considers the debate over patent law, informed consent, and benefit-sharing in the context of biomedical research in respect of Indigenous communities. In particular, it focuses upon three key controversies over large-scale biology projects, involving Indigenous populations. These case studies are representative of the tensions between research organisations, Indigenous communities, and funding agencies. Section two considers the aims and origins of the Human Genome Diversity Project, and criticisms levelled against the venture by Indigenous peak bodies and anti-biotechnology groups, such as the Rural Advancement Foundation International. It examines the ways in which the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural …

Not All Bad: An Historical Perspective On Software Patents, Martin Campbell-Kelly

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Paper places the current debates about software patents in the historical context of patenting in the information technology industries. The first computer-program products were sold in the mid 1960s when software patents were not generally allowed; as a result, trade secrecy became endemic to the software industry. Software products were also protected by copyright, but in practice this offered little protection against most forms of appropriation by reverse engineering or cloning. By the early 1980s a series of landmark cases led to the acceptance of software patents. It is argued that this development was consistent with the patenting of …

To Innovate Or Not To Innovate, That Is The Question: The Functions, Failures, And Foibles Of The Reward Function Theory Of Patent Law In Relation To Computer Software Platforms , Seth A. Cohen

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The patent system has traditionally been viewed as having two primary functions: the reward function and the prospect function. Although these theories do explain some behavior which results from the practical applications of the patent system, they also overlook some behavior of the patent system which indicates a failure of these functions. In order to properly prevent such failure, this paper proposes that the patent system adopt an orientation that will lead to increased innovative rivalry and competition. In Part I, using the computer operating system software market as an example, I propose a framework for reconceptualizing patent protection as …

Escaping The World Of I Know It When I See It: A New Test For Software Patent Ability, Brooke Schumm Iii

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The major thesis presented in this article is a focused standard of software patentability, in particular for pure computational methods or algorithms directed to the manipulation of numbers operating on a computer. The general philosophy is to compel inventors to narrow their claims to an algorithm expressed in terms of its utility and then to require that the particular utility or functionality be expressed in the claim as a limit on the claim, thus precluding the patent monopoly from being overbroad. As a corollary, any person is free to use or perhaps to patent the algorithm for a different utility …

Software Developers Want Changes In Patent And Copyright Law, David A. Burton

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Most software developers do not oppose all software copyrights. There is broad support for basic copyright protection of computer programs which prohibits directly copying computer programs without the author's permission. Nearly all commercial software is copyrighted, and most programmers agree that such protection is necessary in order for software development to be profitable. However, software patents and "look and feel" copyrights go well beyond this to prohibit other programmers from independently writing even programs that are similar to the protected program. Such constraints are strongly resented by many in the software development community who long for the good old days …

Information Wants To Be Free, But The Packaging Is Going To Cost You, Gregory A. Stobbs

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The question is this: where do we draw the line between private ownership and the public domain? It is not a question of choosing between copyright and patent, of choosing between hardware and software, or of choosing between implementation and algorithm. It is a more fundamental question that reaches back to ancient human values and transcends our current fixation on computers and software. It helps to put things in perspective. When debating where we and the law are headed (as we are now), it helps to know where we have been. In this regard, do not assume that software patents …

Comments In Response To The Patent And Trademark Office's Proposed Examination Guidelines For Computer-Implemented Inventions, Robert R. Sachs

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Guidelines reflect a policy decision that computer-implemented inventions require both hardware and software elements. This policy decision and definition present several important issues. First, do the Guidelines accurately reflect and accommodate the practices of the software industry and software engineers? Second, do the Guidelines accurately reflect the current case law?

Software Patents--Just Make A Good Thing Better, David R. Syrowik

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Some have stated that software is somehow "different" from other technologies and must be treated differently. Others have gone so far as to advocate the abolition of patents for software-related technologies. I disagree with both propositions. I believe a heavy burden rests on those who advocate that a particular field of technology should be exempted from the patent system absent a statutory prohibition. Software-related technology should be treated under the U.S. patent laws as any other technology would be treated. Otherwise, investment in the software industry will be negatively impacted. The current patent system is vital to the protection of …

Recognition Of Proprietary Interests In Software In Korea: Programming For Comprehensive Reform, Byoung Kook Min, Gary Sullivan

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will review the legal environment and major issues concerning software protection in the Republic of Korea, and will describe the existing applicable laws and regulations and the trend towards software protection in the region. In addition, the implications of Korea's pending accession to the Universal Copyright Convention will be analyzed. Finally, this article will conclude with a discussion of the current reforms and their implications for Korean international trade law.

Some Problems Of Legal Regulation Of The Use Of Computer Technology In Czechoslovakia, Viktor Knapp

Michigan Journal of International Law

Technical progress is one of the most important elements of social development which necessarily causes change in the law. In the past few decades computer technology has become very important. As a component of technical progress, computer technology has given rise to new social relations which require legal regulation. Such regulation, however, is not provided adequately by existing legal rules in the contemporary Czechoslovak legal system.