Technology investor Joe Lonsdale said actors in China are reviewing patent applications filed by U.S. artificial intelligence and life science startups to extract technical knowledge for commercial use.
Lonsdale, founder of venture firm 8VC and a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, described the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as “completely broken” and said some founders might be better off not filing patents, in a July 13 interview with Bloomberg TV.
The concern arises from a basic division in patent law: publication is global, but protection is territorial.
Under federal law, most qualifying U.S. utility and plant applications are published approximately 18 months after the earliest filing date claimed by the applicant. The filing’s technical descriptions, diagrams, examples, and proposed claims then become publicly available….