Free Online Seminar – Machine Inventors, Fact or Science Fiction?

In August 2019 the ‘Artificial Inventor Project’ team led by Ryan Abbott, Professor of Law and Health Sciences at University of Surrey UK, announced that it had filed a number of patent applications naming an artificial intelligence (AI) as inventor.  The AI, called ‘DABUS’, was developed by Missouri-based physicist Dr Stephen Thaler.  The filings – which garnered significant publicity – were a deliberate provocation, calculated to test patent laws and challenge the conventional notion that only a natural person can be an inventor.  The EPO, the UKIPO, and the USPTO have since rejected the applications for failing to meet requirements that an inventor designated in a patent application be a human being.  Even so, various IP organisations, including WIPO, the USPTO, and the EPO, have been actively exploring the implications of machine learning (ML) and AI for patent law and practice, including the question of whether a machine can invent.

So, have we really reached the point at which machines can challenge humans in the realm of creativity and ingenuity?  And, if so, why are we hearing about it from a law professor and a lone developer, rather than in peer-reviewed publications by leading AI research teams, or in media releases from well-known mega-corporations that have invested billions in this technology?  Furthermore, are we really expected to take seriously claims made by Dr Thaler that his AIs exhibit enhanced creativity as a result of infusing symptoms of ‘mental illness’ into their neural networks? 

Personally, I have been astonished at the lack of scepticism towards claims of machine inventorship, not only in the media, but also among many patent professionals, and within reputable IP offices.  Even the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in a recent draft issues paper on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Policy’, went so far as to accept that ‘it would now seem clear that inventions can be autonomously generated by AI’, noting that ‘there are several reported cases of applications for patent protection in which the applicant has named an AI application as the inventor.’

Nonetheless, whatever I might think of DABUS as a specific example, major national and international IP organisations are responding to broader challenges presented by emerging ML technologies that, inventorship aside, raise genuine questions in relation to subject matter eligibility, obviousness, and sufficiency of disclosure. And since ML technologies can be applied in almost any field of endeavour, from engineering design through to drug discovery, these issues are not confined to inventions in the IT space.

Last month, I presented a webinar on this topic to members of the Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA).  I have now recorded a version of that presentation, and am making it available as a free online seminar.  It can be viewed on YouTube, or via the embedded player below.  A PDF copy of the presentation slides [1.12MB] is also available for download.

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Tags: Artificial intelligence, Innovation, Inventorship, Machine learning, Patent law, Patentology seminars

‘Innovation’ Drops From the Agenda as Yet Another Sitting Australian Prime Minister Given the Boot

Last week, Australia got a new Prime Minister, with former Treasurer Scott Morrison replacing former lawyer, investment banker, tech investor, and republican Malcolm Turnbull.  However, lest any foreigners, hermits, or future historians who have perhaps stumbled upon this article in the National Library’s Pandora Archive, assume that this is a sign of a robust democracy recognising the will of the people, I should point out that it was not as a result of a general election, but of internal sniping and fighting within a governing party.  As many readers will be aware, this is now ‘normal’ in Australia – the last elected Prime Minister to actually lead their party to a subsequent election was John Howard in 2007.  Since then, we have had just three further elections, but five changes of Prime Minister.

In September 2015, when Turnbull deposed Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia, a wave of positive sentiment swept through Australia’s innovation community – among which I count the many entrepreneurs, scientists, researchers, technologists, investors, and associated professional services providers (including patent attorneys) whom I encountered at various meetings, events, and seminars during those heady early days of the Turnbull Government.  The reason for this was partly because many of those people viewed Malcolm Turnbull as a kindred spirit, with personal, hands-on experience as an investor in technology businesses, and a generally progressive and positive attitude towards science, technology, and innovation.  Additionally, Turnbull’s first major policy announcement was of an investment of A$1.1 billion over four years in a ‘national innovation and science agenda’, in which he called for an ‘ideas boom’ to replace the ‘mining boom’ (and, more generally, Australia’s reliance on primary industry for exports), and declared his desire to see a cultural shift to embrace risk-taking, and destigmatise failure.

Ah… halcyon days!

Over less than three years, however, most of that initial positive energy has dissipated, to be replaced with disillusionment and disappointment, as talk of innovation at the top levels of government petered out to little more than a whisper.  And now, with the change in ‘leadership’ (I use the word advisedly), it seems that ‘innovation’ is completely off the agenda.  In particular, in announcing his new Cabinet, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ditched the word entirely, with Karen Andrews being appointed Minister for Industry, Science and Technology (which presumably means that the Department formerly known as Industry, Innovation and Science is to be similarly renamed), and former Minister for Jobs and Innovation, Michaelia Cash, now appointed as Minister for Small and Family Business, Skills and Vocational Education.

So how did this happen?  How did ‘innovation’ go from a A$1.1 billion policy imperative to being a dirty word in government in under three years?

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Tags: Australia, Innovation, Innovation policy, Politics

Australia Again Fares Woefully in Capitalising on Innovation in WIPO’s Annual Index

Last week, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published its Global Innovation Index 2018 (GII) report, as it has done every year since 2011.  Jointly authored with Cornell University and the INSEAD Business School in France, the GII is intended to provide ‘a detailed quantitative tool that helps global decision makers better understand how to stimulate the innovative activity that drives economic and human development.’  It ranks 126 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending, and scientific and technical publications.

In 2018, Australia ranks 20^th overall, which is a gain of three places since 2017.  The countries that were ahead of Australia and that have slipped behind in 2018 are New Zealand (now 22^nd, down from 21^st), Austria (down from 20^th to 21^st), and Iceland (crashing down from 13^th in 2017 to 23^rd in 2018).

Yet, while Australia has risen slightly in the overall rankings, it continues to languish in a pathetic 76^th place, i.e. in exactly the same position as last year, in a measure that I regard as particularly telling – the ‘innovation efficiency ratio’, which indicates how much innovation ‘output’ the country is getting in return for its innovation ‘inputs’.  Australia’s efficiency ratio is just 58%, which compares to the median of 61%, and is way below the values for those countries that are most effective at converting innovation inputs into outputs, such as Switzerland (96%), Luxembourg (94%), China (92%), the Netherlands (91%), and Ukraine (90%).  Yes, you read that correctly – Ukraine is the fifth highest performing economy on innovation efficiency because, while it ranks just 43^rd overall in the GII, and a rather poor 75^th on innovation inputs, its effectiveness in converting those inputs places it at number 35 in the output ranking.

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Tags: Innovation, Innovation policy, Politics

Australian Patent Performance is the Victim of a Vortex of Negativity, and Education (Alone) is Not the Solution

In my previous article, I wrote about low patent-filing rates by Australian innovators, and lamented that this is the continuation of the country’s long history of giving intellectual property away for free.  And while occasionally this has been done intentionally, with good (if misguided) intentions, more often it is the result of a failure, through ignorance or inadvertence, to recognise and protect IP where suitable forms of protection are, in fact, available.  I speculated that there may be some fairly persistent cultural biases that keep IP protection generally, and patents in particular, off the radar of many Australian innovators, and I suggested that lifting Australians’ use of the patent system may require little more than some effort at self-education, and a change in mindset.

Thinking about this further, however, I have realised that it is mindset-change that represents the real challenge here.  There already exist many resources to assist Australian innovators in improving their IP awareness and knowledge.  IP Australia provides a range of educational materials, including videos published via its YouTube channel, and (in a very welcome change from its reticence just a few years ago) is active on both Facebook and Twitter.  It also does a lot of outreach and educational work through email lists, seminars/webinars and other events.  Another major source of information is the Australian IP profession – patent attorneys, trade marks attorneys, and IP lawyers.  Most patent attorneys, for example, do not charge for initial consultations, and between phone enquiries and initial meetings often provide over an hour of free education and general advice before a potential client makes a decision on whether to proceed or not.  And for every such enquiry that leads to paid work, there may be half-a-dozen or more that go nowhere.  IP Australia’s recently-developed ‘Engaging an Attorney Toolkit’ is yet another good educational resource, which assists innovators in getting the most out of their initial contact with a patent attorney.

However, there is nothing new about the availability of many of these types of educational materials.  Furthermore, while they have been growing in number and quality over recent years, there has been – as the charts in my previous article show – absolutely no real growth in the numbers of patents being filed by Australians, in Australia and elsewhere, over this period.  Just today, I attended IP Australia’s first ever IP Summit, ‘Launch to Export’, where rooms of interested members of the public heard about various aspects of IP protection, government assistance programs, and the experiences of successful entrepreneurs.  My guess, however, is that this event will also have no impact on patent filings.

What I realised, as I looked around the room, is that all of these educational events, efforts and materials have one thing in common – the people who engage with them have already made the decision that they need to find out more about IP.  The information may now be more readily-available, and of higher quality, than in the past, but what has not changed is that the subset of innovators and entrepreneurs actually motivated to seek IP knowledge has not fundamentally changed.  Unlike the schooling of children, neither the government, nor anybody else, has the power to make IP education compulsory!  Nor is it a question of leading the horse to water in the hope that it may decide to drink – the horse has refused the bridle, cantered across the paddock, jumped the fence, and decided to forego all aqueous opportunities in favour of pursuing its own interests elsewhere!

So the educational content is available, but we need to get Australian innovators and entrepreneurs to want to consume it.  To make that happen, we are going to have to figure out why there is so little interest in IP in general, and patents in particular.  I maintain that this is largely a cultural issue, and I hypothesise here that there is a reinforcing feedback system operating, that I will call the ‘vortex of negativity’!  To drag the mindset of Australians caught in this vortex back into the light, where they can evaluate the potential value of patenting their innovation with clear and unbiased vision (and I am not, of course, suggesting that patents are always the right choice), I suggest that we may need to appeal to their basest economic instincts, by providing clear financial incentives or rewards to businesses that patent their new technology.  And I have a few modest proposals as to how this might be done!

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Tags: Government programs, Innovation, Innovation policy, Tax incentives

Australians Must Step-Up On Patents, Stop Giving Away Free IP!

There is a famous story about how the insect repellent Aerogard^® became a household name in Australia.  It involves a visit to Australia in 1963 by Queen Elizabeth II, in the course of which Her Majesty was sprayed with a formulation developed by CSIRO entomologist Doug Waterhouse, containing the chemical N, N-diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET), to ward off the country’s numerous and persistent flies.  (Apparently, clouds of the insects had interfered with the famous Royal Wave on a previous visit.)  Within days, the Mortein company requested the formula from Waterhouse, who obligingly handed it over gratis, as was CSIRO policy at the time – three cheers for the great generosity of the Australian taxpayer!  The rest, as they say, is history … including the inevitable 1969 acquisition of the Australian Aerogard product and brand by British company Reckitt & Colman (now the massive multinational conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser).  Other innovations commonly touted as having originated in Australia, but capitalised upon elsewhere, include the black box flight recorder, heart pacemaker, photovoltaic cells, and X-ray crystallography.

While CSIRO is no longer in the game of giving away valuable intellectual property for free, sadly it seems the same cannot be said for Australian innovators more generally.  Otherwise, how are we to explain a stagnation in patent filings by Australian residents?  Over eight years, from 2009 to 2016 – the most recent year for which numbers are available at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) IP Statistics Data Center – the number of Australian patent applications filed by Australians barely varied from around 2500 per year.  Australians actually file more US patent applications than they do Australian applications, however these numbers are also stagnant, fluctuating around 3700 applications over the same eight-year period.  In 2016, the rate of US patent filings by Australian applicants was 152 applications per million population.  In the same year, US applications by US applicants ran at 913 per million population.

Surely the reason for the low filing rates, and lack of growth in filings, cannot be a lack of Australian innovation?  According to the 2017 Global Innovation Index (GII) Report, Australia ranks 23^rd out of 127 countries for innovation performance, which is not great.  Significantly, however, Australia fares much better on ‘input’ metrics than on ‘output’ metrics.  Input metrics capture elements of the national economy that enable innovative activities, and encompass institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, and business sophistication.  Australia ranks 12^th on the innovation inputs sub-index, and performs particularly well on infrastructure (ranked 7^th), human capital and research (9^th) and market sophistication (9^th). 

But even though Australia is (mostly) well-placed to generate positive innovation outcomes, it has long lacked the ability to follow-through.  On the GII outputs sub-index Australia ranks a lowly 30^th, while on the innovation efficiency ratio (outputs divided by inputs) the country ranks an abysmal 76^th.

Furthermore, on the input side Australian businesses lack sophistication, with the country ranking 27^th on this group of metrics.  Tellingly, the business sophistication group of metrics includes ‘patent families filed in two or more national offices’ (relative to GDP by Purchasing Power Parity), in which Australia performs appallingly, by any standard.  Australia’s score on this metric is just 1.0, which compares to the USA on 5.0, Japan on 15.5, Korea on 16.3, and New Zealand on 4.7.  It is hardly any comfort that the UK (2.5) and Canada (2.9) are not great performers on this metric, either – they are still doing a lot better than Australia.

In my experience, ‘lack of sophistication’ pretty much sums it up when it comes to many Australians’ attitudes towards intellectual property generally, and patents in particular.  Too many Australian innovators and businesses simply do not understand intellectual property.  They ignore it, put it in the ‘too hard’ basket, are ignorant about it, or are sceptical or even actively hostile towards it.  Certainly they do not value it highly, and many are extremely reluctant to spend any money on it.  But in choosing not to protect their intellectual property, these businesses are, in effect, just giving it away for free, as surely as CSIRO once did as a matter of policy.

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Tags: Innovation, Innovation policy, Patent analytics

The Impact of Machine Learning on Patent Law, Part 3: Who is the Inventor of a Machine-Assisted Invention?

In the first part of this series of articles, I argued that invention is inherently a creative act, and that since machine learning systems – however impressive or surprising their achievements – are incapable of human-like intelligence, reasoning, agency, or creativity, they therefore cannot ‘invent’.  I acknowledged, however, that machines are certainly increasingly involved as ‘assistants’ in the process of invention.  In the second part of the series I argued that where the result is a patentable invention there must always be at least one human inventor.  In this final part, I want to look at how we should go about identifying the inventor(s) in any given case of machine-assisted invention. 

There are, in fact, three main aspects of machine learning technology in relation to which inventions may arise.  The most rarefied of these is in the underlying machine learning algorithms and architectures themselves.  Comparatively speaking, very few people work in this area, and for the most part they are to be found in universities and research centres. 

Secondly, inventions may arise through the application of machine learning technology to solving problems and/or producing new results, products, and services.  I expect that this is currently the most common type of machine-learning-related invention, particularly given the wide range of software tools now available to assist programmers in implementing the underlying algorithms. 

Thirdly, there are ‘machine-assisted’ inventions, which are generated wholly or in-part by machine learning systems.  Currently, such inventions are relatively rare, considering that few applications of machine learning are actually directed to the generation of new technologies.  However, as machine learning increasingly finds its way into computer-aided design and engineering applications, this may change.

In all cases, however, I would argue that it is possible – and, indeed, necessary – to identify one or more human inventors (and no machine inventors).  To suggest otherwise is, in my view, to misunderstand the true nature, and limitations, of machine learning systems.  In a letter to shareholders, published in 12 April 2017, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote what is possibly the most succinct and jargon-free summary of what distinguishes machine learning systems from ‘traditional’ programming:

Over the past decades computers have broadly automated tasks that programmers could describe with clear rules and algorithms. Modern machine learning techniques now allow us to do the same for tasks where describing the precise rules is much harder.

The evolution from ‘traditional’ programming to machine learning is not as dramatic as some of the hype might lead us to believe.  Instead of coding the ‘rules’, machine learning developers now build systems that are able to capture and generalise from patterns that exist in their input data.  These systems still operate using rules and algorithms – but now these algorithms determine how they go about doing the capturing and the generalisation, rather than how they produce the final result.  Viewed at an appropriate level of abstraction, then, little has changed, except for the power and scale of our machines.

In view of this, I argue that when it comes to machine-assisted inventions, inventorship will generally arise from successfully designing and applying a machine learning system on the path to achieving an inventive result, even in cases where the underlying software and/or hardware employed may have been developed or supplied by someone else.

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Tags: Artificial intelligence, Innovation, Inventorship, Machine learning, Patent law

The Impact of Machine Learning on Patent Law, Part 2: ‘Machine-Assisted Inventing’

In my previous article, I argued that existing (and foreseeable) artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) systems do not exhibit creativity or inventiveness, and are incapable of anything that could reasonably be described as ‘invention’.  I acknowledged, however, that some such systems have generated results that may qualify as patentable inventions.  I therefore concluded with a question: if computers cannot invent, and yet the outcome of running a computer program can be an invention, then who – if anyone – is the inventor?

In addressing this question, it is important to understand that ML systems do not autonomously or independently generate novel outputs.  In my view, this is a fundamental error of understanding in Professor Ryan Abbott’s paper ‘I Think, Therefore I Invent: Creative Computers and the Future of Patent Law’, Boston College Law Review, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2016 (also available at SSRN), which I discussed in the first article of this series.  Abbott contends, in particular, that ‘machines have been autonomously generating patentable results for at least twenty years and that the pace of such invention is likely increasing.’ 

This, I have argued, is simply wrong.  The difference between a computer that is programmed to play the board game Go, and one that is programmed to learn to play Go is, of course, significant.  The former can only make moves that are determined in accordance with its explicit programming, whereas the latter may appear to ‘invent’ new strategies in response to patterns occurring in its training data that have not previously been recognised by human players.  But the appearance of invention is not the same thing as actual invention.  The ML player is still doing nothing more than following the instructions devised by its programmers.  The Google DeepMind AlphaGo system has become the world’s best Go player as a result of years of development, trial, experiment, and experience on the part of its designers.  AlphaGo plays as well as it does simply, and only, because that is what it was designed to do.  In this sense it is no more ‘autonomous’ than any other computer program.

In this second article I will explain why I believe that in the case of all existing (and currently foreseeable) ML systems which may generate inventions as output, there is always a human inventor.  This is consistent with the history and current state of patent law, as well as with the practical and technical reality of ML systems.

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Tags: Artificial intelligence, Innovation, Inventorship, Machine learning, Patent law

The Impact of Machine Learning on Patent Law, Part 1: Can a Computer ‘Invent’?

As a product of millions of years of evolution, the human brain is a remarkable organ.  Recent research indicates that a typical brain comprises somewhere in the vicinity of 80 to 100 billion neurons, and a roughly equal number of non-neuronal cells.  This mass of biological matter is capable of astonishing feats – many of them simultaneously – from enabling us, consciously and unconsciously, to control the behaviour and movement of our bodies, to sensing, comprehending and interacting with the environment around us, to communicating with one another using a variety of languages and symbols, to creating, composing and inventing brand new works of science, technology, and art.  In performing all of these tasks, the brain consumes just 20 watts of power.  By way of comparison, microprocessors at the high end of Intel’s latest Core i7 range consume up to 140 watts.

One relatively recent product of the amazing human brain is the range of technologies often collectively called ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI).  That is the last time I will use this particular phrase without irony in this series of articles – in my view, it is too vague a term, and tends to create an impression that computers are somehow approaching the capacity to operate on-par with human intelligence, which is simply not true.  Nonetheless, such luminaries as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have piped up over the past year or so with their concerns that our machines may soon rise up and render us obsolete or, worse still, destroy us!

In a similar vein, there are some people in the field of intellectual property who are starting to ask questions about whether computers can be ‘creative’ or ‘inventive’ and, if so, whether it should be possible for a computer to be named as an inventor on a patent application – or, conversely, whether some humans should be disentitled from inventorship on the basis that their computers, rather than themselves, were the true inventors.  One academic who has been making a name for himself in this emerging field of study is Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey, Ryan Abbott.  Professor Abbott is the author of, among other works on the topic, ‘I Think, Therefore I Invent: Creative Computers and the Future of Patent Law’, Boston College Law Review, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2016 (also available at SSRN), in which he argues that the law should embrace treating non-humans as inventors because this ‘would incentivize the creation of intellectual property by encouraging the development of creative computers.’

As I shall explain, however, I do not agree with Professor Abbott that computers can, or should, be regarded as inventors for the purpose of granting patents.  Furthermore, while Abbott accepts claims that patents have already been granted on what he calls ‘computational inventions’, I firmly believe that a computer is yet to ‘invent’ anything.  In my view, the researchers and technologists who claim otherwise have an interest in promoting a particular perspective, and in doing so they are subtly extending the definitions of ‘creation’ and ‘invention’ to encompass the contribution of their machines, to the detriment of the human operators who are responsible for providing the true creative input in the process.

I am further concerned that, should this view of ‘machine as (co)inventor’ prevail, it will in fact be to the detriment of the patent system.  I think it highly unlikely that lawmakers – whether they be legislators or common-law judges – will embrace the idea of granting patents on machine inventions.  On the contrary, it seems far more probable that if the notion takes hold that computers are actually doing the ‘inventing’ in many cases, it will simply become even more difficult for humans to secure patent protection for computer-implemented, or computer-assisted, inventions.

This is a complex topic that I intend to cover in a series of three articles.  In this first part, I will introduce the field of machine learning, give some examples, and then attempt to dispel some of the hype that has developed around this technology – including in Abbott’s work.  My aim here is primarily to refute the argument that existing machines are capable of engaging in ‘creative’ or ‘inventive’ activity.  In part 2, I will delve into the role of machine learning in assisting with the generation of new inventions.  Finally, I will look at how to go about identifying the (human) inventors in such cases.

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Tags: Artificial intelligence, DABUS, Innovation, Inventorship, Machine learning, Patent law

‘Clustering’ Australia’s Patent Applicants

I recently generated an interactive map of Australia’s most innovative postcodes, using recent Australian patent application and maintenance data.  While it is, of course, interesting to know whether one lives or works in a particularly innovative part of the country, the exercise of classifying activity by postcode is inherently artificial, in that it presupposes there is something ‘meaningful’ about the region covered by each particular postcode.  There is, however, no reason to suppose that this is the case.  There is nothing about the boundaries between adjacent postcodes, which are set by postal authorities for their own administrative purposes, that would necessarily lead to them being well-suited to the task of locating innovative activity.

A somewhat less arbitrary regional structure (from a socio-economic perspective) is defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), in the form of a hierarchy of ‘statistical areas’ (SAs).  In conjunction with its Australian Geography of Innovative Entrepreneurship (2015) research paper, the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science produced its own interactive Innovation Map using the ABS SA3 definitions as the basic regional unit.  Generally speaking, SA3s are regions with populations between 30,000 and 130,000 persons and reflecting regional identity in terms of geographic and socio-economic characteristics.  This results in aggregation of data over wider areas than individual postcodes.  In Sydney, for example, it results in the greatest number of patent filings being attributed to the Sydney Inner City SA3 region.  It is not possible, at this level, to observe the particular concentration of activity occurring around Macquarie University in the North of Sydney noted in my postcode-based analysis, since this is ‘diluted’ by lower activity in other parts of the encompassing Ryde-Hunters Hill SA3 region.

The answer you receive thus depends upon the question you ask, e.g. how many patent applicants are located within a particular postcode, or within a particular SA3 region?  In both of these cases, a set of geographic areas is imposed before even commencing the analysis, and the results are constrained by this choice.  In the real world, however, innovation does not begin or end at some artificial boundary set by a postal officer or statistician.  So how can we analyse the distribution of patent applicants objectively and without applying predetermined geographic constraints?

One approach to this problem is a technique known as cluster analysis, or clustering.  The idea behind clustering is to apply an algorithm to automatically group elements in a data set according to a measure of similarity, such as geographic proximity.  It can be regarded as a form of machine learning in which the algorithm is designed to ‘discover’ patterns in the data without explicit direction from a human operator. 

In this article, I present some results of applying one of the most commonly-used clustering algorithms, k-means, to an Australian patent application data set to analyse national and local distributions of patent applicants.  This kind of analysis could be used, for example, to identify regions in which it could be most productive to invest in support for innovative industries, or to set up a business providing services to innovative companies, such as R&D tax advice or IP services.

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Tags: Australia, Innovation, IPGOD, Patent analytics

Where Are Australia’s Most Innovative Postcodes?

According to IP Australia data covering live patents and applications, and recently-filed provisional applications, as at the end of 2015, the most innovative postcodes in Australia, across all fields of technology, are those taking in Macquarie University and surrounds in the North of Sydney.  Postcodes 1710 (Epping, NSW) and 2612 (represented by the nearby Blenheim Road post office) collectively accounted for nearly 1200 patents and pending applications, and 200 provisional applications filed by Australian applicants within the preceding three years.  This represents around 17% and 5%, respectively, of all such patents and applications owned by Australian applicants at that time.

Other hotspots are the regions around the CBDs of the New South Wales, Queensland and Victorian state capitals Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.  Also featuring strongly in the top 50 postcodes for patent filing are major university precincts in and around the University of Sydney, Monash University and the University of Melbourne.

In addition to the major cities, where it is unsurprising to find significant concentrations of innovative activities and industries, there are also a number of notable regional centres of innovation.  These include the NSW Central Coast, north of Sydney, particularly around Somersby (postcode 2250), west of Sydney around Long Point (postcode 2867), and Aitkenvale in the suburbs of Townsville in North Queensland (postcode 4814).

More generally, a map of Australian patent filing and ownership by postcode leads to a similar conclusion to the one I reached in my recent analysis of the origins of biotechnology patent applications – innovation is a collective activity that tends to occur in geographic clusters.  By exploring the interactive map below, you will be able to identify the various localities on national, state, regional, urban and suburban scale within which much of Australia’s innovative activity takes place.

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Tags: Australia, Innovation, Innovation policy, IPGOD, Patent analytics

The Most Prolific Inventors of the Past 25 Years, and the Connections Between Them

“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main...” – John Donne, Meditation XVII

A simple analysis of inventor data from the US Patent and Trade Marks Office (USPTO) records reveals something interesting but, upon reflection, unsurprising: invention does not happen in a vacuum. Prolific inventors tend to be associated with other prolific inventors, and/or with prolifically inventive organisations.  Of the ten people who have received the most US patents over the past 25 years, there are four ‘pairs’ of inventors who have worked closely together over an extended period, and one who works for IBM – a company that recently topped the list of US patent recipients for the 24^th consecutive year.  And, while the final member of the top 10 is not partnered with any other famously prolific inventor or company, he has at least one co-inventor on around half of his granted patents, where the same names of family and associates keep cropping up.

Two Australians make the list.  Indeed, the most prolific recipient of US patents over the last quarter century is Australian Kia Silverbrook.  The other Australian in the top 10, at number five, is Paul Lapstun, who has worked with Silverbrook for many years.  Japan’s top inventor, Shunpei Yamazaki comes in at number two, with his colleague at Yamazaki’s company Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL), Jun Koyama, at number four.  Long time collaborators, and now senior inventors at Intellectual Ventures, Rod Hyde and Lowell Wood sit at numbers three and six respectively. 

Two members of the list, Apple’s Jony Ive (10) and Bartley Andre (seven), make the grade primarily on the basis of their large numbers of design patents, while Kangguo Cheng comes in at number eight on the basis of his work at IBM Research.

The tenth member of the top ten, coming in at number nine, is Donald E Weder, who is inventor or co-inventor on a mix of utility and design patents relating primarily to floristry.  Even though Weder is not paired with any other member of the top 10, or associated with a famous corporation like IBM, he is nonetheless a collaborator like all the other, sharing the inventing credits with up to 11 others on some of his patents.

All of this serves to confirm that the popular image of the lone inventor, toiling away in isolation in a laboratory or garage somewhere, is a complete myth.  Innovation mostly happens where the conditions are right, and that means having a supportive environment, including teams of innovative people who can work together and bounce ideas off one another in the course of creating something new.  Indeed, over 3,600 patents attributed to the top 10 inventors have two members of the list as co-inventors.

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Tags: Innovation, Inventors, Patents and society, Public policy

Australian High Court Nukes Biotech Industry from Orbit: “It’s the Only Way to be Sure”

The High Court of Australia has followed the US Supreme Court in unanimously declaring that naturally-occurring DNA sequences – even when extracted from the cell nucleus and isolated by human intervention – cannot, in themselves, be validly the subject of patent protection.  In particular, all seven High Court judges found that claims 1-3 of Myriad Genetics’ Australian patent no. 686004, each of which is directed to isolated nucleic acid molecules corresponding with the BRCA mutation associated with increased breast cancer risk, are invalid because they do not define a patent-eligible ‘manner of manufacture’ under Australian law: D'Arcy v Myriad Genetics Inc [2015] HCA 35.

In arriving at this ruling, the High Court has reversed the decisions of six Federal Court judges – one at first instance (Cancer Voices Australia v Myriad Genetics Inc [2013] FCA 65), and five more on appeal to a full bench of the Federal Court (D’Arcy v Myriad Genetics Inc [2014] FCAFC 115) – all of whom found that nucleic acids, once extracted from a cell and isolated from a complete DNA molecule, are artificially-created products that are chemically, structurally and functionally different from their natural counterparts, and thus patent-eligible.

Furthermore, in reversing last year’s decision of the Full Federal Court, the High Court has (retroactively) made a liar of Australia’s Trade Minister, Andrew Robb.  For months, Mr Robb has been telling anyone who will listen that Australia does not need to extend ‘data exclusivity’ for biologic drugs, because this country provides more extensive patent protection for biological materials than some others.  This line has been followed primarily for the benefit of the US negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), who initially wanted the agreement to mandate a minimum 12 years’ data exclusivity. 

As recently as 6 October 2015, following finalisation of the TPP after seven years of negotiations, Mr Robb was talking up Australia’s patent system as a key factor in reaching agreement on the contentious issue of data exclusivity for biologics.  Yet, the very next day, the High Court dropped its nuclear bombshell on that argument, by not only replicating the action of the US Supreme Court in declaring isolated naturally-occurring DNA to be unpatentable, but going further in extending this to synthesised biologics – including cDNA – that essentially embody the same ‘information’ existing in the naturally-occurring biological molecule.

Just to be clear, nobody – not even Myriad Genetics – cares that three Australian patent claims directed to the isolated DNA comprising the BRCA mutations have specifically been declared invalid.  Quite aside from anything else, the patent has expired, having reached the end of its 20-year term on 11 August 2015.  There are also probably very few people who would be greatly concerned that isolated naturally-occurring DNA sequences are not patentable in Australia.  It is now widely regarded that the completion of the human genome project, along with the relative ease, speed and low-cost of gene sequencing nowadays, has largely rendered such claims unpatentable for lack of novelty or inventive step anyway.

The larger concern with the Australian High Court’s decision for the entire biotechnology industry is likely to be its focus on the information content of the naturally-occurring DNA as ‘an essential element of the invention as claimed’.  This reasoning will create significant uncertainty as to the circumstances under which any product – whether wholly, or partially, synthesised, and including cDNA – which essentially exists to provide a ‘medium’ for naturally-occurring information, may continue to be regarded as patent-eligible in Australia.

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Tags: Australia, Biotechnology, Genetic technology, Innovation, Patentable subject matter, Public policy, Trans-Pacific Partnership

‘Shark Tank’ Debuts Down-Under

Shark Tank is a ‘reality’ TV show in which people with innovative ideas pitch to a panel of wealthy business people – the eponymous ‘sharks’ – in the hope that one or more of them will bite and invest a chunk of their own cash in exchange for a hunk of the business.  It has been a huge success in the United States, where it premiered in August 2009, and screens on Friday evenings.  I know this because when the US Shark Tank is on-air (Saturday morning, local time), my Twitter feed is alive with comments as many of the people I follow on Twitter watch and Tweet in real-time.

The Australian version of the show debuted on Channel 10 at 8pm last night (i.e. Sunday, 8 February 2015).  I have my fingers crossed that it will catch on here, and based on tonight’s opening episode it is certainly in with a chance.  But I would have to say it is no sure thing.  Australians, broadly speaking, are different from Americans.  While Australian people are clever and creative, this country lacks the ingrained entrepreneurial culture that can be found in the US.  This was on display in tonight’s opening episode, in the attitudes and behaviour not only of the Australian would-be investees, but also of the Australian sharks.

The thing is that we have been here before.  The Shark Tank format was not new when it launched in the US in 2009.  It was derived from the UK version, Dragon’s Den, which has been running since 2005, and which continues to spawn international franchises under various names.  The format originated in Japan, in 2001, where it was called ‘マネーの虎 (Manê no Tora)’, or ‘Money Tigers’.  Australia already had our own version of Dragon’s Den on Channel 7 in 2005, which ran for only one season before being cancelled due to poor ratings.

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Tags: Australia, Innovation, Shark Tank

Why Science Is Not An Industry (and Our Petals Are Precious)

Australia currently has no minister (or department) for science.  One of the first acts of Prime Minister Tony Abbott when his government was elected last year was to name a cabinet in which, for the first time since 1931, there was no minister with the word ‘science’ anywhere in his title (I use the masculine pronoun intentionally, because one of the other characteristics of the current cabinet is that it includes only one woman in a total of 19 members).

In October 2013, Abbott defended this decision in front of an audience of scientists, saying:

It’s been remarked upon, ladies and gentlemen, that we don’t have a minister for science as such in the new government. I know there are some in this room who might have been momentarily dismayed by that, but let me tell you, neither does the United States have a Secretary for Science, and no nation on earth has been as successful at innovating as the United States and I’d say to all of you, please, judge us by our performance, not by our titles; judge us by our performance, not by our titles.

The difference, in case it is not obvious enough, is that the US has never had a Secretary for Science, whereas Abbott made a conscious decision, after 82 years of there having been a science portfolio in every Australian government, to erase the word from his ministry.  Where the previous government had a Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the current government has a Department of Industry, headed by Minister Ian Macfarlane. 

Supposedly, responsibility for science continues to lie with the Minister for Industry.  However, it seems that Macfarlane is starting to get a bit tetchy with people who think, just because he does not have the word ‘science’ in his title, that he is not, in all but name, the Minister for Science.  And when I say ‘people’, I mean ‘scientists’.  And when  I say ‘scientists’, I mean (according to Macfarlane) ‘precious petals’.  Because last week Australia’s Minister for Industry, the Honourable Ian Macfarlane, MP, said:

I’m just not going to accept that crap [criticism of the lack of a science minister].  It really does annoy me, because there is no one, no one, more passionate about science than I am. I am the grandson and son of a scientist, and I give science more than their share of my time, and just because I’m not the minister for energy, do I hear the whinge from [the energy sector]? No.

But I hear it constantly from some of the precious petals, can I say, some of the precious petals in the science fraternity, and if you can’t guess, I won’t accept it.

Of course, this angered a few scientists, although I think they should wear the label with pride, because they are precious, in the nicest sense of the word!  And responding to name-calling is a distraction from the real issue, which is this government’s rather poor record, to date, on Australian science.

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Tags: Innovation, Politics, Public policy, Science

Podcasting Patents and Tesla’s ‘Open Source’ Strategy

On Friday, 18 July 2014, I appeared on the Beyond Zero – Science and Solutions program on Melbourne community radio station 3CR, to talk about the role of patents in innovation, and more particularly about the recent announcement by Tesla Motors of its intention to ‘open source’ its considerable patent portfolio.

The broadcast interview, which runs for about 27 minutes, in now available as a podcast, or as streaming audio, from both the Beyond Zero Emissions web site, and the 3CR web site.

The discussion, with hosts Matt Grantham and Anthony Danielle, was fairly wide ranging, taking in the origins and objectives of patent law, the rise of patent trolls, the role of patents in the setting and implementation of technology standards, Google’s IP strategy around the Android operating system and, of course, the meaning and implications of Tesla’s announcement.

About Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE)

Beyond Zero Emissions Inc. is a not-for-profit research and education organisation known for its work designing and implementing a zero emissions economy for Australia. It's goal is to transform Australia from a 19th century fossil fuel based, emissions intensive, economy to a 21st-century renewable-energy-powered clean-tech economy.

About Radio 3CR

Radio 3CR was established in 1976.  Broadcasters on the station present over 120 radio programs every week and listeners can tune in on 855AM, stream live through the web or download podcasts of the shows.

The station was created to provide a voice for those denied access to the mass media, particularly the working class, women, indigenous people and the many community groups and community issues that the mass media tends to ignore.  Sadly, this is an all-too-apt description of the place of climate science and action in the Australian media, particularly in view of the government’s recent abolition of the country’s carbon pricing scheme.

Comments

I realise this post could attract comments relating to climate science, rather than patents and innovation.  Although such comments would arguably be off-topic, polite and thoughtful comments on the subject are welcome.  But please note that inflammatory comments will be summarily removed.

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Tags: Innovation, Innovation policy, Strategy

Government Eviscerates Australian Science & Innovation Funding

Last Tuesday evening, Treasurer Joe Hockey handed down the first budget to be delivered by the current Australian Government.  We were warned that it would be tough, and that the Government needed to find billions of dollars in savings in order to bring the budget back into surplus over the next few years.  But I had hoped, nonetheless, that it would at least ensure the country’s ongoing investment in key science, innovation, technology and commercialisation programs, to build the expertise, skills and industries that will be most important globally throughout the coming years and decades.

Unfortunately, it seems that one of the Federal Government’s strategies in its 2014 budget is to mortgage the country’s long-term future to produce a better balance sheet in the near-term.

In my view, the Liberal/National Party Coalition Government is selling out Australian science, technology, innovation and creativity.  We will surely come to regret the loss of opportunities, over the coming years, for this country to develop and grow intellectual capital and technological skills.

The LNP government has cut more than A$450 million from key science agencies, including:

1. A$111.4 million from the CSIRO;
2. A$74.9 million from the Australian Research Council;
3. A$80 million from the Cooperative Research Centres program;
4. A$7.8 million from the Australian Institute of Marine Science;
5. A$120 million from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation;
6. A$27.6 million from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation; and
7. A$36 million from Geoscience Australia.

What good news there is for science and innovation in the budget – e.g. a new Medical Research Future Fund, and an Entrepreneurs’ Infrastructure Programme – is more than offset by cuts elsewhere.  What this budget lacks is any kind of coherent long-term vision for the kind of capabilities, industries, skills, knowledge – the intellectual capital and infrastructure – that will make up the Australian economy in five years and beyond, once the painful short-term cuts to expenditure have done their work.

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Tags: Innovation, Innovation policy, Politics, Public policy, Public research

NZ’s PowerbyProxi Sits on a Potential SEP Goldmine

A $4 million investment by Samsung Ventures Investment Corporation in New Zealand company PowerbyProxi Limited has received wide coverage over the past week (see, e.g., the IAM Magazine blog, scoop.co.nz, gigaom.com and AllThingsD, among many others).

On the face of it this is a good news story for the NZ start-up company, which was founded in 2007 based, in part, on intellectual property originally developed at the University of Auckland.  PowerbyProxi claims to have developed the world’s most advanced and safest wireless power system, and the first commercial wireless recharging system capable of 3D power transfer, regardless of how a device (such as a smartphone) is oriented within the recharging unit.  It also claims to own a portfolio of 126 granted patents worldwide, along with numerous further pending applications.

There are two components to the Samsung deal.  Samsung Electro-Mechanics has entered into a strategic partnership with PowerbyProxi, under which it will license the NZ company’s consumer electronics and home appliance wireless power IP and technology.  The other component is the $4 million in strategic funding from Samsung Ventures Investment Corporation, which will also see Samsung Ventures America senior investment manager Michael Pachos joining the PowerbyProxi board, suggesting that the deal gives Samsung a substantial equity interest in the company.

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Tags: Innovation, Intellectual Asset Management, Licensing, New Zealand, Technology standards

IP Australia Delivers Mixed Report Card on Australian IP

Last month IP Australia launched the Australian Intellectual Property Report 2013.

This report contains an attractively-packaged compilation of data and information about the IP system in Australia, and how the country measures up internationally. 

While the report includes information on patents, registered designs, trade marks and plant breeder’s rights, naturally my primary interest is in the statistics on Australia’s performance in relation to patents and technology innovation.

And what IP Australia’s report has to tell us about this is not exactly discouraging, but will hardly set the world on fire.  ‘Revelations’ in the report include:

1. Australians are filing more patent applications than ever before, both locally and overseas;
2. however, increasing patenting activity is not leading to any significant change in Australia’s ‘IP balance of trade’;
3. foreign nationals file the vast majority of Australian standard patent applications, and receive most of the patents granted here; and
4. it appears that the big challenge for Australian companies lies in capturing and extracting value from intangible assets, currently languishing at only 4% of tangible asset value (compared with 91% in the US).

IP Australia promises that this will be the first in an ongoing series of reports and updates, and it is well worth a read..

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Tags: Australia, Innovation, Innovation policy, Patent Office, Public policy, Public research

EFF Off the Mark With Latest ‘Abuse’ Allegations

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Daniel Nazer and Julie Samuels have a tragic tale to tell, which they hope will stir the souls of the online community to action.

In a nutshell, the narrative goes something like this…

Once upon a time, a few innovative, dedicated entrepreneurs started a Little Red Riding Company called Ditto Technologies, Inc, based on the great idea of letting people try on eyeglasses in a virtual environment by using webcam images to build a 3D model of their heads and faces.  Within two years, their hard work in building an appealing product was starting to pay off.  Ditto had received funding to build its business, employ new staff, and continue to improve its product.

But then along came a Big Bad Wolf Company, called 1-800 CONTACTS.  Although the Wolf was already in the business of selling prescription eyewear (i.e. contact lenses) online, it had no product that competed directly with Ditto.  Yet the Wolf had purchased a patent from a ‘defunct company’ which (it alleged) covers Ditto’s virtual try-on service, and was now suing California-based Ditto in the distant Land of Utah.

The cost of litigation (and the possibility of losing) threatens Ditto’s very existence, unless an army of diligent Woodcutters can be rallied to find prior art capable of invalidating the Wolf’s patents!

Poor little Ditto.  But is it possible that there is another side of the story?  One in which the Big Bad Wolf is just misunderstood, and the Little Red Riding Company might be, to some extent, a victim of its own (and its investors’) mistakes?

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Tags: Computer programs, Infringement, Innovation, Innovation policy, Law reform, Patentable subject matter, Patents and society, Public policy, Trolls

How PatentlyApple Harms Patents – Including Apple’s

Up until now I have had an informal, unwritten policy of not critiquing other blogs.  After all, I know as well as anyone just how much hard work goes into maintaining a blog, coming up with ideas for articles, and finding the time and energy to actually write them.  Anybody who does that deserves a certain degree of respect, even if I happen to disagree with everything they say!  After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

However, there are opinions, and then there are facts.  And when a widely read blog consistently posts false or misleading information, there is absolutely no good reason not to call them on it.  This is particularly true when that misinformation has the potential to influence views in a matter of significant public interest, such as the debate over the merits (or otherwise) of patents for computer-implemented inventions (please note that I am deliberately avoiding the meaningless term ‘software patents’).

One blog with which I have a huge problem in this regard is PatentlyApple.  For those unfamiliar with the blog, it is an overtly partisan celebration of all things (allegedly and actually) innovative at Apple, Inc.  Occasionally, this involves spiteful attacks on all things (allegedly and actually) imitative at Apple’s competitors, such as Samsung and Microsoft.  However, it is not these matters of opinion or rhetoric with which I have a problem.

My big issue with PatentlyApple is the way in which it consistently misconstrues and misrepresents the content and scope of the patents and applications – of Apple and others – which it purports to explain.  The reason for this is simple – PatentlyApple is not written by a patent attorney.  The fact is that it takes many years of training and experience to interpret a patent specification, and particularly the claims, which are ultimately determinative when it comes to assessing what the patent covers.  And having typically spent a number of illustrated paragraphs purportedly explaining to a large audience what a patent application is all about, PatentlyApple’s disclaimer that it is necessary to read the ‘full text’ of the document to obtain complete details just does not cut it!

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Tags: Apple, Claim construction, Computer programs, Innovation, Microsoft, Patents and society, Samsung