Watch more: TechReg Talks With Matthew J. Dowd and Judge Paul Michel
Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required.
Artificial intelligence is making it cheaper to invent. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s getting any less costly today to turn an invention into a business. That distinction is emerging as a new fault line in the debate over intellectual property and competition policy.
As AI systems become capable of generating scientific discoveries, software and creative works with diminishing human involvement, policymakers face a key question. If the cost of producing ideas approaches zero, does the economic justification for protecting them begin to disappear?
Not necessarily, according to Paul Michel, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Matthew J. Dowd, founder and managing partner at law firm Dowd Scheffel, who argued the opposite during a discussion hosted by Competition Policy International (CPI), a PYMNTS company.
“If you have a small innovative company, and they come up with a great idea, and that idea happens to be in the area where there are two or three dominant firms, that small innovator only has a fighting chance if they have strong intellectual property,” Dowd said.
The counterintuitive implication is that weakening patents could reinforce concentration by making it easier for incumbents to absorb innovations developed elsewhere.
An AI system might identify a promising pharmaceutical compound in seconds, but bringing that discovery to market could still require years of clinical trials, regulatory approvals, manufacturing investments and distribution agreements.
Source link
