Artificial Intelligence presents issues that require innovators to reconsider how to appropriately foster, protect, and enforce developments by their personnel. Patents can provide significant protection, but also present challenges in terms of patentability, inventorship, and novelty. Copyright can be used to protect software related innovations, particularly where a patent would not suffice or face significant obstacles, but can present authorship issues. Finally, trade secrets may provide protection where copyrights and patents cannot but can also suffer from drawbacks such as costly infrastructure investment to provide adequate protection. Once protected, an AI asset must then be leveraged, either internally or externally, to generate further value and justify the expense of its protection.
