Software Patents as a Bubble
In recent years China was granting loads of software patents. Western mainstream media mocked those patents for being of notoriously low quality, basically a bubble, and many latched onto buzzwords like "hey hi" (AI), i.e. another bubble.
The other time (or day) we used the term inflation to refer to this phenomenon in an article about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which likes to ignore 35 U.S.C. § 101 and simply grant a lot of silly patents on very silly algorithms. The more monopolies the USPTO grants, the more money it will make. But at whose expense?
Our hunch is that many software patents, having already perished in courts since Alice (SCOTUS), will also perish in patent offices, where applicants already bemoan the very low quality of work. In the case of the EPO, formal online petitions and statements were issues by some of the EPO's very large, even largest, applicants.
Items or virtual "assets" such as patents are only as valuable as society collectively perceives them to be. If the perception around some given patent is, "Well, who the heck knows if a court will upholds this!!" then that patent will be seen as more of a risk than an asset, as asserting such a patent in an actual court (not some cheap-shot extortionate, behind-the-scenes effort) might result in massive legal bills and then a court order to compensate the defendant/accused/alleged infinger.
It's not unrealistic to expect that in the coming years - or decades - a lot of the contemporary patent system will turn out to be a bubble, more so in the area of software. When the "hey hi" bubble pops pretty much every patent that claims to cover "AI" will immediately lose more than 90% than its presumed "value". It's the same as what happened to so-called 'blockchain patents'.
Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it. █
"So, you're saying a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable and that this is a bubble that's going to burst and take the whole economy with it?" Source: Cory Doctorow Says the AI Industry Is About to Collapse, Futurism a few days ago