Two Startups Raise Basic IP Law Questions

Two unusual startup companies could necessitate a revision to our IP laws, according to attorneys Ben Hattenbach and Joshua Glucoft from Irell & Manella. The first, apparently a satire, claims that its computers are in the process of generating ever possible combination of words and thus will be able to preemptively copyright everything. The other is a company with a genuine product – software that is purported to “linguistically manipulate a seed set of a client’s patent claims by, for example, substituting in synonyms or reordering steps in a process, thereby generating tens of thousands of potentially patentable inventions.” In both cases, similar questions about “inventorship” and computer-generated claims arise, questions we are likely to see more of.