Correct me if I'm wrong, but we have no recent and explicit US gov't guidance on whether these model weights are copyrightable. Copyright office has said ai-generated outputs are not copyrightable[1], but hasn't weighed in on weights(?) Kind of seems like that should change? Wasn't a relevant question for AlphaFold2, as the weights for it were CC BY 4.0 license. These model weights (and many other ml weights) are cle…
In the old days of genomics there were massive patent wars. First, the human genome project itself. Craig Venter got massive funding to sequence the human genome with the understanding he'd patent all the genes. So there was a space race of sorts where the private sector sought to beat him - lead by Francis Collins now head of the NIH. It came out a tie (or that's what they called it), Bill Clinton brought them both on a stage and said "great job! also genes aren't patentable!"
Then a whole stink arose around Myriad Genetics who patented a BRCA test. Now that's a bigtime gene far as cancer goes see: Angelina Jolie. Then in 2013 the supreme court ruled genes cannot be patented.
So what is alphafold 3? Is it a ground truth of which protein interacts with what? In which case it seems not patentable. Or is it a method, or algorithm, to estimate protein interactions? That's more grey area. Idk. If google wanted to monetize it proper they'd probably keep it as an internal black project and cook up pharma collabs and such. But they've made it public(ish). Still a long way to go, or at least some more steps. If we say Protein A interacts with Protein B, we then have to ask whether they're expressed in the same cell, which itself is not enough! Most bio measurements are in big batches of millions of cells. It has to be same cell at the same time. So if our batch is a million cells w/ protein A, a million cells w/ protein B, then it looks like both are "on" in our batch of 2 million cells. But the truth is more nuanced. And then even then, other considerations such as post translational modifications and which cellular compartment these proteins reside in.