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AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

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Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#121

Post by overgard »

alzamos wrote: post #53

The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…

That's interesting, but I'm a little skeptical about pharma. Right now there are a lot of really potentially-promising molecules that pharma isn't really interested in bringing to market because they can't patent them. I don't know though, maybe the game changes if nobody can patent drugs, but then I think you'd need to make FDA approval a lot cheaper.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#122

Post by munk-a »

layer8 wrote: post #91
munk-a wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an invention was trivial enough to be invented by AI then why should we allow that action to be patented? The expenditure of labor to research that invention was minimal and definitionally not novel.

I wasn’t arguing for AI inventions to be patentable, I was arguing against the argument presented above, which to me doesn’t make sense as an argument. I’m very much for not allowing trivial patents, but that’s independent from whether the invention was made by AI or by a human. The nature of the inventor should be immaterial for assessing the (non-)triviality of an invention.

I am in agreement that we should disallow trivial patents in general but I think there's an easy win here that patents directly attributed to AI can be clearly disregarded as trivial. It'd also be nice to see an overhaul of the patent system to better narrow the scope to investments with real innovative effort but I think that overhaul is relatively complex to implement.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#123

Post by overgard »

shimman wrote: post #103
svara wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spend billions to get a drug from concept to approval - and then once you've invested all that money, someone else can just sell it too, free loading on all the studies you ran? Why would anyone invest in drug studies? I need a bit more depth and detail to believe that this doesn't destroy the pharma industry. What would the empirical evidence even look like? It's not like the modern pharma industry existed befor…

[flagged]

I agree, but man, getting the money to make the world a better place goes through the capitalists right now so unfortunately that's the game. Can't fix the problem without fixing the system. (I'm not like hardcore marxist or anything, but incentives shape everything; have to fix the incentives)

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#124

Post by ClarityJones »

shimman wrote: post #103
svara wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spend billions to get a drug from concept to approval - and then once you've invested all that money, someone else can just sell it too, free loading on all the studies you ran? Why would anyone invest in drug studies? I need a bit more depth and detail to believe that this doesn't destroy the pharma industry. What would the empirical evidence even look like? It's not like the modern pharma industry existed befor…

[flagged]

People talk about capitalism as if there is a choice; as if Gravity might not pull us towards earth.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#125

Post by thinkingtoilet »

svara wrote: post #95
alzamos wrote: post #53

The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…

You spend billions to get a drug from concept to approval - and then once you've invested all that money, someone else can just sell it too, free loading on all the studies you ran? Why would anyone invest in drug studies? I need a bit more depth and detail to believe that this doesn't destroy the pharma industry. What would the empirical evidence even look like? It's not like the modern pharma industry existed befor…

> Why would anyone invest in drug studies?

To make a shit ton of money. These things are insanely profitable. Generics exist and they're still profitable. You can get 99% of drugs from over seas and they're still profitable. These companies make trillions of dollars over the years. Yes, they might make slightly less money, but they still would be making a shit ton of money.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#126

Post by Buttons840 »

svara wrote: post #95
alzamos wrote: post #53

The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…

You spend billions to get a drug from concept to approval - and then once you've invested all that money, someone else can just sell it too, free loading on all the studies you ran? Why would anyone invest in drug studies? I need a bit more depth and detail to believe that this doesn't destroy the pharma industry. What would the empirical evidence even look like? It's not like the modern pharma industry existed befor…

> You spend billions

The you being taxpayers, right?

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#127

Post by svara »

Buttons840 wrote: post #126
svara wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spend billions to get a drug from concept to approval - and then once you've invested all that money, someone else can just sell it too, free loading on all the studies you ran? Why would anyone invest in drug studies? I need a bit more depth and detail to believe that this doesn't destroy the pharma industry. What would the empirical evidence even look like? It's not like the modern pharma industry existed befor…

> You spend billions The you being taxpayers, right?

No, only a small part of this is publicly funded.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#128

Post by alzamos »

svara wrote: post #95
alzamos wrote: post #53

The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…

You spend billions to get a drug from concept to approval - and then once you've invested all that money, someone else can just sell it too, free loading on all the studies you ran? Why would anyone invest in drug studies? I need a bit more depth and detail to believe that this doesn't destroy the pharma industry. What would the empirical evidence even look like? It's not like the modern pharma industry existed befor…

The book goes into quite a bit of depth if it is a topic that interests you.

I would flag that we’re getting into “prove a negative” territory here: the goalpost is that we need to prove empirically that patents achieve the desired outcome. If the scenario you describe accounts for all game-theory/incentive/complex-adaptive-system universes, we should see this reflected in the data.

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, they looked into Italy and Switzerland who switched to a patent system in 1978 (and I believe Portugal in the 1990s). They looked at the growth curves of things like # of inventions, total factor productivity, percentage R&D spending, and the conclusion was that there was no statistically significant change in trajectory that would suggest the introduction of the patents had any positive effects. (Edit: they accounted for domestic/international + US filings before/after as well).

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#129

Post by Ajedi32 »

ClarityJones wrote: post #124
shimman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

People talk about capitalism as if there is a choice; as if Gravity might not pull us towards earth.

I'd quibble with that. Capitalism is a choice, market dynamics are not. E.g. The Soviet Union successfully outlawed capitalism, and in response market dynamics made their country collapse.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#130

Post by mx7zysuj4xew »

overgard wrote: post #121
alzamos wrote: post #53

The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…

That's interesting, but I'm a little skeptical about pharma. Right now there are a lot of really potentially-promising molecules that pharma isn't really interested in bringing to market because they can't patent them. I don't know though, maybe the game changes if nobody can patent drugs, but then I think you'd need to make FDA approval a lot cheaper.

Care to name a few of them? I've always suspected that novel new substances were being "kept on the shelf" due to a lack of monetization
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