[$] Using AI on patents

Software patents account for morethan half of all utility patents granted in the US over the past fewyears. Clearly, many companies see these patents as a way to fortune and growth, even whilesoftware patents are hated by many people working in the free andopen-source movements. The field of patenting has now joined the onwardmarch of artificial intelligence. This was the topic of a talk at OSCON2018 by Van Lindberg, an intellectual-property lawyer, board member andgeneral counsel for the Python Software Foundation, and author of the bookIntellectualProperty and Open Source. The disruption presented by deeplearning ranges from modest enhancements that have already beenexploited-making searches for prior art easier-to harbingers ofautomatic patent generation in the future.