Digitalization and IP Management – Developments and Challenges

The fourth industrial revolution connecting billions of people and uncountable number of machines around the globe changes the world rapidly, affecting our personal, work, and business environment. The magnitudes of connections and data exchange are increasing by multiple every day creating a more and more dense data coverage and transparency. In this article, Claudia Jamin describes the major developments and challenges regarding digitalization and IP management.

During the last 250 years human innovational spirit resulted in industries 1.0 – 3.0 leading us from first practical steam engines through elevated conveyer belts for mass production to electronics and software-based control enabling automated production. However, Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing the industrial markets with digital technologies driving innovation increasingly with artificial intelligence where mankind interference becomes less and less, with all pros and cons. By 2025 disruptive technologies just as IoT, mobile internet, automation of knowledge work, cloud technology and advanced robotics –just to name a few- will have substantial impact on every country, industry, and society.

One of the many results is the massive generation, transfer, storage, processing and analyzing of structured and unstructured data and the creation of big data. Beside data volume and velocity, data variety is one of the most important contributors adding quality content to the socalled big data collected form human beings and machines. Artificial Intelligence (AI) using such data to enhance algorithms and continuously improve results changes the landscape of industrial development, markets and competition, and finally us.

The big data market is expected to grow worldwide to USD 88 billion in 2025. Hence, investments in the development of products and services just like software, databases, and platforms for generating, processing, and storing big data by software, content and database providers will continuously increase. And again, AI using such data will create (?) new products and services where intellectual property rights and their ownership become essential for competing successfully in the markets. Investment intense industrial companies change business strategies and all at a sudden compete with new market players just as start-ups and multinational software companies. Market participants and their shares change, and it is crucial to protect own current and future business in a complex IPR environment.

Legislations barely keep up with the speed of change and so a lot of legal questions remain unanswered by law. While in particular IPR law was introduced to protect human creativity and innovation, the applicability may be doubtful where machines and AI generate and innovate. Who owns data and by which law it is protected? Does AI “create” anything that should be protected by IPR law? If not, is there any other legal protection available? How can companies secure their investments in new technologies with an effective and efficient IPR strategy?

At the end of the day, companies need to decide which risks and opportunities they want to take and IPR management needs to follow and find tailored solutions covering such business decisions and strategies. Flexibility and creativity are required for adjusting to legal and market developments to stay in the game. For sure, it is and remains an exciting and dynamic field of legal practice and management.