When Cars Run On Software: Protect the IP For Your Self-Driving Cars! Brought to you by Garcia-Zamor Intellectual Property Law, LLC
When Henry Ford’s company designed the first Model-T, they probably never considered the idea that one day car manufacturing would be a matter of digital software as much as the physical manufacturing of the car’s parts. In fact, even twenty or thirty years ago the idea of self-driving cars seemed to be a thing of the distant future, a plot idea for science fiction. Today, however, that possibility is in the process of becoming a reality. There are as many as 250 car manufacturers working on self-driving cars. Volkswagen has
Ruy Garcia-Zamor, Attorney at Law
partnered with Microsoft to create their cloud-based automated driving platform. Tesla, Ford, General Motors, and many others are all working towards the goal of releasing fully autonomous vehicles. Uber has even worked self-driving vehicles into their rideshare services. All of these self-driving cars need software in order to run efficiently, safely, or… well, at all. Without a human driving the car, the control is left to the computer system as well as a series of sensors. Because self-driving cars are such a big goal right now, innovation is highly competitive. It’s important to protect your software with the right patents and copyright registration. Patenting Software For Autonomous Vehicles The USPTO will grant manufacturers a patent on autonomous vehicle software based on two contingencies: • That the software is not anticipated or obvious based on past art • That the subject matter is not a “judicial exception” (such as something too abstract) or that it adds additional limitations amounting to “significantly more” than the judicial exception You may register a utility patent or a software patent. A utility patent protects the machine learning software itself, as it provides the utility of driving the car. A design patent protects a unique design or packaging, such as the interface of the software or a console design. Utility patents will protect your software for 20 years and a design patent will last for 15 years. Copyright Registration For Autonomous Vehicles Software is built with code, and code is protected under copyright law. Copyright registration can protect your software code for as long as 70 years. However, under current law, copyrighted works must be created by a human author. If the code was created by AI, it may not be eligible for copyright, although the machine learning system itself can be copyrighted.
Without a human driving the car, the control is left to the computer system as well as a series of sensors.
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NOZZLE & WRENCH I DECEMBER 2023
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