ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: LESSONS FROM WAYMO (GOOGLE) & UBER'S BLOCKBUSTER TRADE SECRETS

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Gangwal. World Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS: LESSONS FROM WAYMO (GOOGLE) & UBER'S
BLOCKBUSTER TRADE SECRETS
Dr. Amit Gangwal*
Director, Business Intelligence, Arogya Retail, Indore, MP, India.
INTRODUCTION
Amazon, Facebook, Google are powerful organizations in the world.
The only reason in my opinion is they have huge data pool. By writing
here I am not undermining their innovative abilities, foresightedness
and everlasting hunger for being at the top. Their innovative prowess
brings them more and more users/consumers. Largest pool of personal
data rest with Facebook in the world. Other few organizations which
have the potential to change the economy of the world are Soft bank,
Microsoft, IBM Tensent, Alibaba, Naspers, Walmart, Tesla etc. With
such a huge data sea, talent, cash, globally acceptable leaders; experts
say these companies can change the direction in which world is going. Price control and a
check on profit limit no more seem to be effective and justified ways to control incessant,
lopsided growth/monopoly of such giants. I appreciate & admire innovative approach of all
these global giants. Competition Commission of India, India's antitrust watchdog, lately fined
Google for abusing dominant position. It imposed a 1.36 billion rupees ($21.17 million) fine
on search engine giant "search bias" and abuse of its leading/commanding position. Google
was found to be involving in practices of search bias thus leading to damages to rivals. This
may be the topic of investigation as to why select organizations do wonder.
The branch of science (A gamut of disciplines, such as computer science, psychology,
philosophy, sociology, mathematics, biology and neuron Science add to the development of
AI.) which deals with making intelligent machines which can mimic human capabilities and
intelligence is known as artificial intelligence (AI). Owing to this various disciplines, AI is
now being used for various fields like problem solving, game playing (best quotable
examples are go & chess), theorem proving, natural language processing and/or
*Corresponding Author
Dr. Amit Gangwal
Director, Business
Intelligence, Arogya Retail,
Indore, MP, India.
Article Received on
27 January 2018,
Revised on 17 Feb. 2018,
Accepted on 09 March 2018,
DOI: 10.20959/wjpps20184-11267
WORLD JOURNAL OF PHARMACY AND PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES
SJIF Impact Factor 7.421
Volume 7, Issue 4, 453-457 Review Article ISSN 2278 – 4357

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Gangwal. World Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
understanding, speech/pattern recognition, robotics, neural architecture, computer vision and
engineering design analysis etc. In this article I am writing about artificial intelligence (AI)
and intellectual property right (IPR). To make content lucid and fruitful, I am sharing here
recent example of Waymo and Uber. This high profile and blockbuster case has caused wide
spread discussion among policy makers and intellectual property rights think tanks. Perhaps
this is the best example to understand how artificial intelligence will define the coming
course of IPR.
Waymo and Uber (Driverless car project)
One interesting example worth quoting here is of Uber and Waymo (stands for a new way
forward in mobility). "Waymo is an autonomous car development company and subsidiary
of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. As per the information mentioned on its website,
“Waymo is a self-driving technology company with the mission to make it safe and easy for
everyone to get around—without the need for anyone in the driver’s seat. Our journey started
at Google in 2009, and we became Waymo in 2016. We are building the world’s most
experienced driver”. Last year Waymo filed a court case against Uber accusing it of
“calculated theft” of the Google spinoff’s technology. Uber Technologies Inc. is a
ridesharing, food delivery, and transportation organization (headquartered in San Francisco).
Much of the trial has revolved around inter alia Lidar (a laser-sensing machinery). Cardinal

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element was the actions of Anthony Levandowski. Anthony Levandowski is credited as one
of the main think tank members involved in company’s groundbreaking self-driving car
project. Levandowski left Google in January 2016 and floated his own venture for
autonomous vehicle. Uber’s acquisition of that startup for a reported $680m triggered the
lawsuit; perhaps an unprecedented case that has captivated Silicon Valley for the past year.
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick testified that he wanted to hire the then-Google engineer
at the center of the case, Anthony Levandowski, as early as 2015. "I wanted to hire Anthony
and he wanted to start a company, so I tried to come up with a situation where he could feel
like he started a company and I could feel like I hired him," Kalanick said. Waymo argued
that Uber has stolen the technology/idea of Anthoni who was with them before joining Uber.
Legal issues around IP for AI: With whom the copyright on content created by
machines rest?
Investments in AI technologies have constantly been skyrocketing. Since 2010, almost 967
Million USD have been pumped in AI and related stuff. Over the years, AI will grow with
leaps and bounds. With such a huge investment & energy in AI; there must be robust,
assiduous & arduous system in practice to protect innovator’s right.
Here innovator may by humans, machines or humans and machines both
This is subject matter of this article. Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0 and
Intellectual Property Law Summit held in capital Ankara, Turkpatent President Habip Asan
said: "There is a 56-percent rise in the applications about the artificial intelligence and
Industry 4.0 in the recent three years to European Patent Office. “In 2016, at least 5,000
patent applications about the Industry 4.0 were made."
Might be possible in next 1 decade a patent will be filed and granted without any human
intervention/invention. The day is not very far when AI will surpass/obliterate all human
intellect in all domains and start re-writing its own softwares and codes to re-programme
itself to become the strongest entities on earth. No doubt here initials inputs will be by
humans only. There will be machines which automatically create works which would be
eligible for a copyright claim. This very fact has sparked debates all over the world for the re-
examination of copyright standards (and other types of IPR) for AIs. It is perhaps known to
all concerned fraternities that a macaque monkey (who clicked selfies) was denied of
copyright protection. With copyrights for animals, not covered by current IPR laws, an

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identical situation has arisen for AIs. This has compelled policy makers to rethink about
ownership of such creations. Will it be possible to grant ownerships to machines, super
computers and other allied stuff by completely keeping humans away from this privilege? In
this case what about those humans who designed the earlier or the very first version of that
machine/coding system etc. Will machines and AI reboot the entire IPR system? At all if
rights/ privileges are distributed or granted to various entities, who will be able to (entitled to)
impose such rights & if an AI or AI-enabled machines/system breaches a creation or
reproduces an invention, how will damages be determined/settled/treated?
CONCLUSION
From autocorrecting our text messages to saving people’s lives to self driving cards, AI has
only started influencing our lives in a great way. Current laws to address anti competitive
issues need to be more robust to minimize or end benefit of doubt situation to offender/rival.
Intellectual property rights are granted for innovative and novel outcome derived/generated
from ones intellectual prowess. But perhaps first time tussle between Google and Waymo
have sparked debate; is there any law to prevent stealing of one’s intellectual prowess or
draining of one’s intellectual talent to another rival’s firm by financial perks etc; especially
when the research or technology is in embryonic stage. Now is the case of Waymo and Uber
a IPR infringement, or leaking/copying/sharing trade secrete or using intellectual of ex
employee of rival firm or original firm who floated the idea in market? With years of
research, IBM’s AI engine Watson, is now competent to detect a type of cancer in just 10
minutes and this once helped save a person’s life. It was said that the same would have gone
unnoticed/undiagnosed with conservative/rudimentary/diagnostic tools. IPR laws were not
meant/designed for AI inventions. Extant IPR laws seem to be extinct in near future. These
laws treat only humans as IP creators/infringers. It’s high time now, for policy makers to
come up with standards when it comes to filing of inventions exclusively done by AI-enabled
machines. Elon Musk (a South African-born Canadian American business tycoon, investor, &
inventor. has pledged a number of AI related patents for greener and cleaner technologies and
these patented technologies are open for anyone to develop them further. It is also believed
that the future of many industries depend on AIs and therefore this is important to realize here
that depending on organization’s capacity and innovative approach it may be possible that
companies will work/invent in close coordination for a bigger mission, common noble goal.
In such situation how IPR policy makers will take decisions, will be a matter of interest. This
may be a crucial aspect of the overall development agenda and sustainability. The AIs will

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slowly become a part of every imaginable industry and even though the European
Commission has taken baby-steps in raising questions over IP Laws for AIs, the future is full
of fascinating predictions for innovators, businessmen, universities, states, policymakers
(especially IPR) and of course end users. A summary report of the European Parliament to
the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics says that in coming years, AI will leave no
section of the society unaffected. It also includes need to frame/elaborate criteria for an own
intellectual creation for copyrightable works developed through AI. Miracles can be
expected from AI from view point of lakhs of patients suffering from treatable or untreatable
rare diseases owing to financial burdens and incapable medical tools respectively. These
miracles must emanate from technology majors as they are equipped with necessary weapons
unlike their pharmaceutical counterparts. Perhaps the most strict research based companies
are considered to be from pharma domains so far until recently. Now those organizations,
which are investing millions and hours on talent for AI, will be called strongest organizations
in the world, as they will have solutions for almost all the problems through AI (though not in
near future). Google, IBM and Microsoft claimed almost every single all-encompassing AI
patents. It may imply that, in the future, these three tech giants (you may call them innovation
virtuoso/ connoisseur) have and will have a competitive/pioneer edge over all the other
players in the AI market.
1. https://clairvolex.com/PDFs/October-2016-Mailer-1.pdf
2. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/09/google-fined-21-million-in-india-for-abusing-
dominant-position.html