Paul Keller

For more than two centuries, the patent system has rested on a simple bargain: inventors publicly disclose their inventions in exchange for a limited monopoly. That bargain assumes disclosure primarily benefits competitors, researchers, and the public. Today, however, the audience has changed. Patent filings are now mined not only by competitors, but by governments, intelligence agencies, sovereign investors, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence systems capable of analyzing millions of documents simultaneously. The result is that patent databases have become one of the world’s richest sources of open-source technological intelligence.

Throughout 2023, a number of legislative initiatives impacting intellectual property rights were introduced in the United States Congress or signed into law by the President. In some instances, these efforts are meant to try and re-balance the various, sometimes competing, interests of the public and the innovators. In other instances, the legislation is aimed at weaponizing the intellectual property right procurement process to reward some and punish others. Various pieces of legislation as well as Executive Directives directed at artificial intelligence also have been introduced at different levels. This piece, however, leaves those AI issues for others to address. Below is a summary of some of the key legislative efforts in 2023 touching on U.S. IP rights.