Can Machine Learning Fix a Broken Patent System?

Can I say just "no"?

As the article notes, no player today an incentive to make patent filings actually useful, especially in software. Patently are generally framed in intentionally over-broad terms with the particular advances buried behind the general idea and offering the least clues possible for those actually aiming to use the information for anything - what else would you expect from a document intended to keep people from using an invention without your permission.

Can we turn a stream of intentionally useless information into something positive? Maybe a super computer genius could? No, a super computer genius would be able to first produce useful stuff from nothing, be already at human+ level before it could pull the "garbage in, diamonds out" trick.

This is a tremendous idea and a good implementation. There is a lot of information and ideas locked in the millions of pages of patent leagalese.

The "collection" feature is awesome: it will allow to crowd-source research into niche topics. Here is a notebook that shows a birds-eye view of the "who is who" in the topic modelling patent space: http://www.lens.org/lens/search/collection/1698/v/analysis#f...

Another possibility would be for "sponsor" companies to pay appropriately trained freelancers (lawyers, devs, researchers, ...) to conduct patent research in public. The sponsoring company might not get a "competitive advantage," but it could be a big PR win. The CompanyX which sponsored the 2014 review of patents on TechnologyX.

Can you imagine how powerful the information contained in patents would be in combination with links to the relevant research articles?

> "[The U.S. patent system] is not obliged to register change in ownership."

That I hadn't known; the implication being, if you intend to leverage a patent with lawful permission from its licensor, it's still possible to get screwed (by being misled about the rightful owner's identity, for instance).

It sounds like machine learning will help unmask patent trolls, but unless you give that machine a gavel I doubt it'll make any difference.