Protection for artificial intelligence in personalised medicine – the patenttrade secret tradeoff
Nari Lee · Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2020
This chapter explores patent and trade secret (TS) tradeoffs in European intellectual property law. It first examines the current status of AI uses in personalized medicine (PM), identifies three areas where hurdles to deliver technological promises appear and explores if patent or TS protection would be better suited to deal with the problems faced by AI uses in PM. The comparison reveals that patent and TS may overlap over the same subject matters of AI algorithm and data, and the restriction in one right may affect access created by the other right. The chapter then revisits three policy points – technology maturity, data quality and transparency. It argues that the confluence of restrictive patent protection, strong personal data protection and expansive TS protection may result in both underuse and overprotection. Based on these findings, the author considers additional regulatory measures to require disclosure of AI algorithms in the public interest.