Just this week, Getty Images sued the makers of Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence system (“AI”) that creates art based on existing art work, like Getty’s. Long before this copyright law suit, the line between artistic “influence” and infringement had been a blurry one, but some think the very the paper it’s written on is disappearing.

The U.S. began losing its grip on copyright with an earlier groundbreaking technology heraldedby Napster, the “file sharing” (and copyright infringing) web application that seemingly everyone had in the early 2000’s. And the music industry has never been the same since.

Might AI-art be the next chapter in technology-fueled erosion of artist’s rights, where a promising new technology winds up disrupting, not enhancing, creativity?

In a surprise holiday gift for innovators, the United States has made major cuts to its intellectual property fees, reducing it’s take from small innovators, called “small entities” and “micro-entities.” This essentially means that individual inventors and most businesses with fewer than 500 employees will now be paying much less for patent applications in the United States in 2023!
For example, U.S. filing fees for new Patent Applications are now at a 60% discount for Small Entities and at an 80% discount for Micro Entities, in comparison to the undiscounted rates.

It is an excellent time to file a patent application on that genius idea or design, and protect your rights to your business income from innovation.

The first time I saw a multi-million-dollar “Masterpiece” by Roy Lichtenstein, a supreme painter from the Pop Art movement, I had the same thought as almost everyone: Isn’t this just a comic?
Now, I like comics, and think they’re fun all blown up and framed, mock-seriously, on the office wall. But they’re a dime-a-dozen, not millions a pop (not even in Pop Art).
As quickly as that silly thought popped up in my mind, it popped away. Of course not! The entire art world would not be duped into shelling out hundreds of lifetime salaries each for simple enlarged comic strips. It must be some other intellectual statement, based on the underlying concept of comic books. Something deeper, I didn’t understand. Something so subtle, I needed an expert to analyze to explain it to me.

If you ask the movies, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” SciFi offerings have long posited a startling, often menacing future, in which technology itself surpasses people’s ability to do everything, including inventing technology itself.
Many experts note that intelligence is just a naturally-arising technology, residing in our brains. And any technology can be reverse-engineered. From this logic, human-level artificial intelligence, with the ability to invent, just like us, appears to be guaranteed, and just a matter of time.
Others argue that invention by AI is plainly already taking place, right before our eyes. For example, we task complex AI neural networks with creating complex designs, including AI computer chips themselves.
But is it truly likely, or even possible, for machines to be inventive, in real life?

We’ve all seen them. Those old-timey looking patent stamps, branded on clever products.
Why do companies do this? Because a patent number, stamped in bold letters, looks impressive? Does touting patent coverage as a badge of honor (or, at least, unique utility or design), help to sell the product?
Yes, and Yes! Patent marking increases the perceived quality and value proposition of a product tremendously, and Products that are marked as patented sell more than unpatented products.
But these reasons, which we all naturally get, are not even the main reason companies MUST mark their patented goods.