Info 202 Fall 2011

Article - IBM Watson to Battle Patent Trolls

Interesting article about IBM’s Watson that ties into 205 (Info Law Class) also. The article is about Watson analyzing a bunch of medical journals and discoveries, including expired medical patents, and producing a massive database that could be used for a variety of purposes by the medical community. One thing that some people are asking now is why not have Watson analyze ALL patents, not just medical ones for two reasons – (1) it takes a lot of time, money and effort for the average person to go through a bunch of patents to make sure that his/her invention is patentable (i.e. not some “obvious” derivation of another patent), and (2) it can help people/companies find “prior art” when a patent troll tries to sue them. An interesting statistic from the article – 6,000 patents filed in 2010 alone. Watson style technology may be a necessary tool for legal applications such as this because there simply seems to be too much stuff out there, and it’s growing, and it’s unclear if congress is capable or could do anything about it.