Patent, patient, patience: IP law and AI for the public good with Phoebe Li

I mean, IP is fascinating.

You can actually, I'm an IP lawyer.

So basically everything I see has an IP lens and I might be biased, but you mean IP the IP in a nutshell is that you can see everything from the lens of ideas, intellectual property, and intangible property, and what kind of control and power ownership or sharing that is fascinating, different layers of angles with you see from the IP lens.

I think that that's also something that you really bring to the conversation, this idea that, I mean, when we talk about intellectual property, the sole idea of property kind of entails this kind of, I would say, private ownership, this individuality of property.

Maybe that's a very kind of Western conception of property as well.

I think when one talks about property, you really have this feeling of possession of something that's yours, that you want to protect and shield from other people.

Whilst I would say the topics that you've been very interested with, from the social dimension of technology, going all the way to AI, going to the kind of between investments and property regulation that can help the development of a whole nation, that's the United Kingdom, you really see this kind of balancing act between the individual property and the collective social dimension of the technology, of the item, of chocolate even, because it's something that you need to share, no? So I'm really fascinated by your research.

Looking into your AI-related project, how do you feel that intellectual property and especially the law of patents and trademarks and that kind of stuff, that specific branch, affect the development of AI? And do you think that, for example, the presence of strong intellectual property rights hinders the development of AI or facilitates some specific developments rather than others?

I mean, AI has a very big role to play in shaping the scope of intellectual property ownership.

As you can see now, I mean, in the headlines, a lot of cases are redefining what is ownership, what is creativity, what is inventiveness, who is inventor, when AI come into research, into discovery of new knowledge and new understanding.

And this is disruptive, obviously, and we also need to come back to the basics.

What exactly is the policy behind when we give away monopoly because intellectual property is an official monopoly and the government gives you the monopoly to exclude others from using your ideas or using your know-how.

And you can have the monopoly to control your know-how, your technology.

This is a very strong monopoly, especially when we talk about And obviously, this is an essential tool for commercialization.

For example, if you want to have the investor's money, then obviously the investor, they will ask if you've got this thing patented.

Or what is the safeguard for that? Or if not patented, do you have a safeguard for trade secrecy? So trade secrecy and patent, they are one coin of two sides.

And we always have to see that in the AI regime, How can we redefine discovery, for example, or disclosure? Because for patenting, you need to disclose your know-how in order to get this monopoly.

But with the AI algorithm, they are more opaque.

They are difficult to really explain in terms of interpretability.

Then there's also a changing boundary between trade secrecy and the scope of patent monopoly.

Longxiu Huang, Ph.D.: And and and where Rosa that issue mentioned that how Ai and IP come into play here.

I mean, I've been looking at morality and probably older or older public for quite some time.

And I wonder whether you are aware of the morality exclusion or exceptions in a patent system.

So at least if you understand the intellectual property is highly territorial.

So if you want to register or be protected by a specific form of IP, normally it's a geographical limitation.