Abstract
Under prevalent patent systems around the world, patenting of inventions related to advances in quantum computing, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence (AI) have begun to raise serious concerns. Advances in AI are particularly problematic because their influence will be felt on all hitherto patent eligible inventions. Since AI machines have the potential to prolifically invent patentable technology, it will undoubtedly shake the very foundation on which the patent system presently rests. It will require us to redefine what we mean by novelty, non-obviousness, and written description of the invention (e.g., shouldn’t a binary string suffice as written description because it is the lingua franca of computers). In this chapter we focus on the US patent system.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Bera (2015).
- 2.
Popper (1963).
- 3.
Inkster (2006).
- 4.
Galileo (1623). The only modern scientist known by his first name.
- 5.
Descartes (1637).
- 6.
Newton (1687).
- 7.
Maxwell (1865).
- 8.
Carnot (1824). Carnot introduced the first modern definition of work as weight lifted through a height.
- 9.
Clausius (1850). Clausius defined the term entropy as the heat lost or turned into waste.
- 10.
Thomson (1854). In this paper, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) first coined the term thermo-dynamics.
- 11.
For example, it forbids the existence of a perpetual motion machine in Nature.
- 12.
“In science credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.” (Francis Galton).
- 13.
In comparison, the agricultural economy preceding it spanned about 12,000 years. See, e.g., Bernstein (2004).
- 14.
Cited from: Kelvin, Lord William Thomson (1824–1907). Wolfram Research. http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Kelvin.html.
- 15.
- 16.
Quotes of Kelvin as they appear in: Kelvin, Lord William Thomson (1824–1907), Wolfram Research, http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Kelvin.html.
- 17.
Popper (1934).
- 18.
Turing (1936).
- 19.
Shannon (1948).
- 20.
Watson and Crick (1953a).
- 21.
Watson and Crick (1953b).
- 22.
Darwin (1859).
- 23.
Landauer (1991).
- 24.
See, e.g., Bera (2015b).
- 25.
Nelson and Cox (2006).
- 26.
Feynman (1965).
- 27.
Wigner (1960).
- 28.
Tegmark (2014).
- 29.
Neumann (1954).
- 30.
Hofstadter (1979).
- 31.
For a timeline of inventions, see, e.g., http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/twentieth.htm. See also: Olson (2015) and Cooke and Hilton (2015). “The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of scientific research. The growing scale of science has been accompanied by a shift toward collaborative research”. “The size of authoring teams has expanded as individual scientists, funders, and universities have sought to increase research productivity and investigate multifaceted problems by engaging more individuals. Most articles are now written by 6–10 individuals from more than one institution”.
- 32.
- 33.
Cohen et al. (1973).
- 34.
- 35.
Gibson et al. (2010).
- 36.
Malyshev et al. (2014).
- 37.
Cong et al. (2013).
- 38.
Sharlach (2014). The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.” For a description of CRISPR-Cas9, see their Nobel Lectures at (Charpentier) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3POrtQEpV2s, and (Doudna) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSrSIErIxMQ.
- 39.
Prather (2010).
- 40.
Yin et al. (2014).
- 41.
NRC (2012).
- 42.
- 43.
Deutsch (1998), p. 98.
- 44.
Bera (2015b).
- 45.
- 46.
- 47.
Nielsen and Chuang (2000).
- 48.
See, e.g., Bera and Menon (2009).
- 49.
Brookes (2017).
- 50.
Brooks (2015).
- 51.
Fisher (2015).
- 52.
Turing (1936).
- 53.
Bera (2019).
- 54.
Erdős and Rényi (1960).
- 55.
May (1976).
- 56.
Watson and Crick (1953a).
- 57.
Watson and Crick (1953b).
- 58.
For a more elaborate explanation see, e.g., Bera (2019).
- 59.
SCOTUS (1961)
- 60.
See, e.g., CAFC (2002).
- 61.
SCOTUS (2014).
- 62.
SCOTUS (1950).
- 63.
SCOTUS (1950).
- 64.
SCOTUS (2002).
- 65.
SCOTUS (1996).
- 66.
Harding (1941).
- 67.
The original statement was in German (“Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.”).
- 68.
Jefferson (1813).
- 69.
- 70.
- 71.
Ashton (1955). James Watt deliberately refused to license certain steam engine related patents held by him to prevent others from bringing improvements into the market and compete against him. He actively discouraged use of steam at high pressure even though it was not covered by his patents. The authority he wielded at the time was sufficient to clog engineering enterprise for more than a generation.
- 72.
Heathcotte and Robert (2006). Stuart Newman and Jeremy Rifkin unsuccessfully sought a US patent in which they claimed a method for combining human and animal embryo cells to produce a single embryo, which could then be implanted in a human or animal surrogate mother, resulting in the birth of a “chimera”. Their unusual objective was to secure the patent and then restrict the application of this technology for the life of the patent, during which they hoped to foster a social debate about moral boundaries in relation to biotechnology patents.
- 73.
- 74.
Jefferson (1813).
- 75.
Ainsworth (2019).
References
Ainsworth C (2019) Want to regrow organs and defy cancer? Just copy these awesome animals. New Scientist
Ashton TS (1955) An economic history of England: the 18th century. Taylor and Francis, 1955, p. 107.
Bera RK (2009) The story of the cohen-boyer patents. Curr Sci 96(6):760–763. http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Downloads/article_id_096_06_0760_0763_0.pdf
Bera RK (2012) Biotechnology patents: safeguarding human health, in innovations in biotechnology, in Agbo EC (ed). InTech, ISBN 978–953–51–0096–6, Chapter 15, pp 349–376. http://www.intechopen.com/source/pdfs/28719/InTech-Biotechnology_patents_safeguarding_human_health.pdf. (Book is available at http://www.intechweb.org/books/show/title/innovations-in-biotechnology and can be downloaded for free)
Bera RK (2015) How valid are judicial exceptions in subject matter eligibility in U.S. patent law?. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2604737 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2604737
Bera RK (2015a) Intellectual property rights: the new wealth of nations. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2572850 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2572850
Bera RK (2015b) Synthetic biology and intellectual property rights. In Biotechnology, in: Ekinci D (ed). InTech, ISBN 978–953–51–2040–7, Chapter 9, pp 195–232. http://www.intechopen.com/download/pdf/48297. (Book is available at http://www.intechopen.com/books/biotechnology)
Bera RK (2015c) Rethinking patentable subject matter and related issues. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2699219 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2699219
Bera RK (2016) Patent subject matter eligibility. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2883838 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2883838
Bera RK (2018) AI powered society. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3256873. An updated version is available at Bera RK (2019) AI powered society. Adv Compu Commun, pp 59–85. https://acc.digital/aipowered-society/
Bera RK (2019) Synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. book chapter in genetic engineering technology and synthetic biology, in: Nagpal ML (ed) IntechOpen, London, (to appear in 2019). Prepublication access to the chapter has been provided by InTech at https://www.intechopen.com/online-first/synthetic-biology-artificial-intelligence-and-quantum-computing; PDF at https://www.intechopen.com/chapter/pdf-download/65149
Bera RK, Menon V (2009) A new interpretation of superposition, entanglement, and measurement in quantum mechanics, ar**v:0908.0957v1[quant-ph]. http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.0957
Bernstein WJ (2004) The birth of plenty: how the modern world of prosperity was launched. McGraw-Hill
Brookes JC (2017) Quantum effects in biology: golden rule in enzymes, olfaction, photosynthesis and magnetodetection. Proc Royal Soc A Math Phys Eng Sci 473:20160822. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2016.0822
Brooks M (2015) Is quantum physics behind your brain’s ability to think? New Scientist. Available from: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830500-300-is-quantum-physics-behind-your-brains-ability-to-think/ Accessed 02 Dec 2018
CAFC (2002) Johnson and Johnston Associates, Inc. v. RE Service Co., 285 F.3d 1046 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 28, 2002) (en banc, per curiam), http://digital-law-online.info/cases/62PQ2D1225.htm
Carnot S (1824) Reflections on the motive power of fire and on machines fitted to develop that power. Bachelier, Paris. http://www.thermohistory.org/carnot.pdf
Clausius R (1850) Über die bewegende Kraft der Wärme, Part I, Part II, Annalen der Physik, 79:368–397, 500–524. See English Translation: On the moving force of heat, and the law regarding the nature of heat itself which are deducible therefrom, Phil. Mag. (1851) 2:1–21, 102–119. https://archive.org/details/londonedinburghd02lond
Cohen SN, Chang ACY, Boyer HW, Helling RB (1973) Construction of biologically functional bacterial plasmids in vitro. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 70(11):3240–3244. http://www.pnas.org/content/70/11/3240.full.pdf
Cong L et al (2013) Multiplex genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas systems. Science 339(6121):819–823. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3795411/
Cooke NJ, Hilton ML (eds) (2015) Enhancing the effectiveness of team science. NAP. http://download.nap.edu/cart/download.cgi?&record_id=19007
Darwin C (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, 1st edn. John Murray, London. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=text&pageseq=1
Descartes R (1637) Discourse on the method of reasoning well and seeking truth in the sciences. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfs/descartes1637.pdf
Deutsch D (1998) The Fabric of Reality. Penguin. Chapter 1, p. 2.
Erdős P, Rényi A (1960) On the evolution of random graphs. Publ Hungarian Acad Sci 5(1):17–61. http://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-readings/erdos60random.pdf
Feynman R (1965) The character of physical law. Modern Library Edition, 1994, Originally published by BBC in 1965, and in paperback by MIT Press, 1967
Fisher MPA (2015) Quantum cognition: the possibility of processing with nuclear spins in the brain. Ann Phys 362:593–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aop.2015.08.020
Galileo Galilei (1623) Il Saggiatore (in Italian) (Rome, 1623); The Assayer, English translation: Stillman Drake and C. D. O'Malley, in The Controversy on the Comets of 1618. University of Pennsylvania Press. http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h291/assayer.htm
Gibson D et al (2010) Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome. Science 329(5987):52–56. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Sci...329...52G
Harding TS (1941) Exploitation of the creators. Philos Sci 8(3):385–390, at 386–387
Heathcotte B, Robert JS (2006) The strange case of the humanzee patent quest. Natl Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 6(1), Spring. https://www.academia.edu/12118574/The_Strange_Case_of_the_Humanzee_Patent_Quest
Hofstadter D (1979) Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid, Basic Books
Inkster I (2006) Potentially global: a story of useful and reliable knowledge and material progress in Europe, circa 1474–1914. Int History Rev XXVIII(2):237–286. http://www.jstor.org/discover/. https://doi.org/10.2307/40109747. An earlier version is available at http://grammatikhilfe.com/economicHistory/Research/GEHN/GEHNPDF/conf4_IInkster.pdf
Jefferson T (1813) Letter to Isaac McPherson. Monticello. In: The Letters of Thomas Jefferson. From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond. American History. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl220.php
Landauer R (1961) Irreversibility and heat generation in the computing process. IBM J Research Dev, 5(3):183–191, Reprinted in IBM J Research Dev, 44(1–2):261–269, January/March 2000. http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/lectures/Rotman_Summer_School_2013/thermo_computing_docs/Landauer_1961.pdf
Landauer R (1991) Information is physical. Phys Today, 23–29
Malyshev DA et al (2014) A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet. Nature 509(7500):385–388. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24805238
Maxwell JC (1865) A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field. Philos Trans Royal Soc London 155:459–512. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/155/459. (This article accompanied a December 8, 1864 presentation by Maxwell to the Royal Society)
May RM (1976) Simple mathematical models with very complicated dynamics. Nature 261:459–467. http://abel.harvard.edu/archive/118r_spring_05/docs/may.pdf
Nelson DL, Cox MM (2006) Lehninger principles of biochemistry. 4th edn. https://www.academia.edu/4622632/Lehninger_Principles_of_Biochemistry_Fourth_Edition_-_David_L._Nelson_Michael_M._Cox
Newton I (1687) Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28233/28233-pdf.pdf
Nielsen MA, Chuang IL (2000) Quantum computation and quantum information. Cambridge University Press. [Errata at http://www.squint.org/qci/]
NRC (2012) Committee on the Mathematical Sciences in 2025; Board on mathematical sciences and their applications; Division on Engineering and physical sciences; National research council. Fueling innovation and discovery: The Mathematical Sciences in the 21st Century. NAP. https://www.nap.edu/download/13373
Olson S (ed) (2015) The past half century of engineering—and a look forward. NAP, 2015. https://doi.org/10.17226/21702.
Palmisano SJ (2003) The globally integrated enterprise. Foreign Affairs 85(3):127–136. http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/37998124.pdf
Popper K (1934) The Logic of scientific discovery. Routledge, 1959. (Originally published in German, Logik der Forschung, Mohr Siebeck, 1934)
Popper K (1963) Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge (Reprinted Ed., 2004). (First published, 1963), Routledge
Prather KLJ (2010) Applications of synthetic biology. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. http://bioethics.gov/sites/default/files/Applications-of-Synthetic-Biology.ppt
SCOTUS (1950) Graver Tank and Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products, 339 U.S. 605. http://supreme.justia.com/us/339/605/case.html
SCOTUS (1961) Aro Mfg. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 365 U.S. 336, 339 (1961), http://supreme.justia.com/us/365/336/case.html
SCOTUS (1996) Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370:371–73. http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-26.ZO.html
SCOTUS (2002) Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyokabushiki Co., 535 U.S. 722 (2002), http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/00-1543P.ZO (vacated and remanded)
SCOTUS (2013) Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2107:2111. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-398_1b7d.pdf
SCOTUS (2014) Nautilus, Inc. v. BioSig Instruments, Inc., 572 U.S. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/572/13-369/
Shannon CE (1948) A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27, pp. 379–423 & 623–656, July & October, 1948, http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf
Shapiro Z (2015) Patent law, expertise, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Harvard Law. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2015/07/14/patent-law-expertise-and-the-court-of-appeals-for-the-federal-circuit/
Sharlach M (2014) CRISPR pioneers honored. The Scientist. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41455/title/CRISPR-Pioneers-Honored/
Stone P et al (2016) Artificial intelligence and life in 2030. One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence: Report of the 2015–2016 Study Panel (2016). https://ai100.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ai_100_report_0831fnl.pdf
Tegmark M (2014) Our mathematical universe: my quest for the ultimate nature of reality. Knopf
Thomson W (1854) (Lord Kelvin). On the dynamical theory of heat. Part V. Thermo-electric currents. Trans Royal Soc Edinburgh 21 (part I):123. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126375#page/147/mode/1up
Turing AM (1936) On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proc London Math Soc S2–42(1):230–265, 1936–1937. https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf Correction at: Turing AM (1938) On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. A Correction S2–43(1):544–546. http://www.turingarchive.org/viewer/?id=466&title=02
von Neumann J (1954) In: Taub AH (ed) The role of mathematics in the sciences and in society (1954) an address to Princeton alumni, published in John von Neumann, Collected Works
Watson JD, Crick FHC (1953a) Molecular structure of nucleic acids. Nature 171(4356):737–738. http://www.nature.com/scitable/content/molecular-structure-of-nucleic-acids-a-structure-13997975
Watson JD, Crick FHC (1953b) Genetical implications of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid. Nature, 171(4361):pp. 964–967. http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/watsoncrick2.pdf
Weiß J, Schwietring T (2018) The power of language: a philosophical-sociological reflection. Goethe-Institut. http://www.goethe.de/lhr/prj/mac/msp/en1253450.htm
Wigner EP (1960) The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Richard Courant lecture in mathematical sciences delivered at New York University, May 11, 1959; published Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13(1):1–14. http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/wigner.pdf
Yin H et al (2014) Genome editing with Cas9 in adult mice corrects a disease mutation and phenotype. Nat Biotechnol. Published online 30 March 2014 (Corrected 31 March 2014). http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2884.html
Zinkernagel H (2016) Niels Bohr on the wave function and the classical/quantum divide. Stud History Philos Modern Phys 53:9–19. https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00353
Zinkernagel, Zinkernagel H (2015) Are we living in a quantum world? Bohr and quantum fundamentalism. In: Aaserud F, Kragh H, editors. One hundred years of the Bohr atom: Proceedings from a conference. Scientia Danica. Series M: Mathematica et physica, vol. 1. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; pp. 419–434. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/11785/1/BohrQuantumWorld.pdf
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bera, R.K. (2024). Vulnerabilities of the Patent System. In: The Evolution of Knowledge. Science for Sustainable Societies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9346-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9346-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-99-9345-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-99-9346-8
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)