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On Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published guidance on inventorship for AI-assisted inventions, clarifying that while AI systems can play a role in the creative process, only natural persons (human beings) who make significant contributions to the conception of an invention can be named as inventors. It also rules out using AI models to churn out patent ideas without significant human input.

The USPTO says this position is supported by "the statutes, court decisions, and numerous policy considerations," including the Executive Order on AI issued by President Biden. We've previously covered attempts, which have been repeatedly rejected by US courts , by Dr. Stephen Thaler to have an AI program called "DABUS" named as the inventor on a US patent (a process begun in 2019).

This guidance follows themes previously set by the US Copyright Office (and agreed upon by a judge ) that an AI model cannot own a copyright for a piece of media and that substantial human contributions are required for copyright protection.

Enlarge (credit: Senate HELP Committee )

When big pharmaceutical companies are confronted over their exorbitant pricing of prescription drugs in the US, they often retreat to two well-worn arguments: One, that the high drug prices cover costs of researching and developing new drugs, a risky and expensive endeavor, and two, that middle managers—pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), to be specific—are actually the ones price gouging Americans.

Both of these arguments faced substantial blows in a hearing Thursday held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In fact, pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars more on lavish executive compensation, dividends, and stock buyouts than they spend on research and development (R&D) for new drugs, Sanders pointed out. "In other words, these companies are spending more to enrich their own stockholders and CEOs than they are in finding new cures and new treatments," he said.

And, while PBMs certainly contribute to America's uniquely astronomical drug pricing, their profiteering accounts for a small fraction of the massive drug market, Sanders and an expert panelist noted. PBMs work as shadowy middle managers between drugmakers, insurers, and pharmacies, setting drug formularies and consumer prices, and negotiating rebates and discounts behind the scenes. Though PBMs practices contribute to overall costs, they pale compared to pharmaceutical profits.

Enlarge / Haven Mercer's prototype front assembly for an automatic bike transmission. (credit: Haven Mercer)

Depending on how you look at it, either a lot or not very much has changed about the way bikes shift gears since the mid-19th century .

A lot has been refined along the transmission path, in which your feet push cranks, those cranks turn a big gear, and a chain connects that big gear to a smaller gear on the rear wheel. Shifting has picked up lots of improvements, be they electronic or wireless, as have derailleurs and internal gearboxes. Materials and tolerances have only improved over the decades.

But in almost all cases, you're still manually adjusting something to move the chain and change gears, depending on the resistance you're feeling on the bike. Even the most outlandish recent ideas still involve indexed movement between different-sized gears.

Enlarge / A marketing image for Asus' Zenbook Pro 14 OLED, which Lenovo is accusing of patent infringement. (credit: Asus )

Lenovo filed a lawsuit against AsusTek Computer Inc. and Asus Computer International, claiming that Asus' laptops infringe on four of Lenovo's patents. Lenovo is seeking damages and for Asus to stop selling Zenbook laptops and other allegedly infringing products in the US.

The lawsuit [ PDF ] filed November 15 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California says Lenovo's looking for a jury trial and "damages, including lost profits, caused by the alleged patent infringement." On Tuesday, Lenovo announced that it filed a patent infringement action against Asus with the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

Four patents

The lawsuit centers on four patents. The first, entitled "Methods and apparatus for transmitting in resource blocks" was issued in 2021 and relates to minimizing the delay experienced during an uplink package transmission by reducing the number of steps for a wireless device to upload data.

Enlarge / The first Amazon Echo speaker. (credit: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A Delaware federal court has ordered Amazon to pay $46.7 million for infringing on four patents belonging to VB Assets with Amazon's Echo smart speakers and Alexa virtual assistant. A lawsuit from Nuance Communications-owned VB Assets, previously known as VoiceBox Technologies, claimed to have already invented a circular speaker that could connect to the web and answer voice-dictated prompts with a female, robotic voice.

Wednesday's judgment [ PDF ], initially reported by Reuters , orders Amazon to pay the sum via running royalty rather than a lump sum. The ruling follows a jury verdict [ PDF ] finding that Amazon infringed upon four of VoiceBox's patents. The patents relate to providing network-coordinated conversational services, a conversational voice user interface, and tying advertisements to natural language processing of voice-based input. VB Assets originally accused Amazon of infringing on six of its patents.

Amazon still has time to appeal the judgment, and VoiceBox has time to seek reimbursement for related costs.

Enlarge / The Apple Watch Series 6. (credit: Apple )

The Apple Watch violates patents owned by California-based Masimo, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled on Thursday [ PDF ]. The federal agency issued a limited exclusion order for the smartwatches, meaning the Apple Watch is in jeopardy of an import ban.

The ITC's ruling upholds a January ruling that found that the Apple Watch infringed on a Masimo patent. The exclusion period recommended on Thursday is supposed to go into effect after 60 days, during which time President Joe Biden can overturn the ruling. Biden previously declined to veto an ITC ruling that found the Apple Watch violated patents of a different company, AliveCor.

The debate is over Masimo's light-based pulse oximetry. The ITC's ruling doesn't specify which watches are affected. But the first Apple Watch to feature blood oxygen monitoring was the Apple Watch Series 6, which came out in 2020.

Enlarge / Google Chromecast with Google TV. (credit: Google)

Google Chromecast infringed upon three patents of Touchstream Technologies, Inc. and should pay $338.7 million in damages, a Western District of Texas jury decided on Friday, as reported by Law360 .

The verdict [PDF ] shows the jury agreeing with Touchstream's allegations that Google violated patents 8,356,251 , 8,782,528 , and 8,904,289 (Touchstream Technologies Inc. v. Google LLC, case number 6:21-cv-00569 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas).

The ruling comes after Touchstream filed a complaint in June 2021 claiming that it met with Google in December 2011 and was told that the tech giant wasn't interested in partnering with it in February 2012. Google then released Chromecast in 2013. The complaint points to the first Chromecast and the second and third generations, Chromecast Ultra and Chromecast with Google TV, as well as other Chromecast-integrated products, as infringements of Touchstream patents.