It’s Friday! That means it’s time for our weekly feature: The Future in 5 Questions. Today we have Lolita Darden, a SAG-AFTRA actor, patent attorney and director of the IP and Technology Law Clinic at George Washington University. She was recently appointed to the Patent Public Advisory Counsel by Commerce Secretary Gina Raymond, and she spoke earlier this month at a copyright and AI seminar at the D.C. Independent Film Forum. Read on to hear her thoughts about adapting to AI, IP protections in the information age and how to find balanced interests in political discourse. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. What’s one underrated big idea? Creating a position for IP enforcement, protection and education. We have so many different government agencies that dabble in IP protections and IP enforcement, but there's no coordination between these different groups. For example, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has some really great educational outreach programs directed toward K through 12. The Department of Commerce and the Department of Education, they're all doing something similar. And if we partner up, think about how much more effective we can be — how many more students and teachers and state superintendents we could reach. With everyone acting individually, the impact is limited. And I see the same thing on the enforcement side. We have the courts enforcing IP rights. We also have the International Trade Commission. The U.S. Patent Office is taking a second look at IP rights as well. I see two big buckets: (1) supporting our competitiveness — nationally and globally, and (2) protecting our national security interests. And it seems like everybody is dabbling in those areas, but that there's no coordination. So I think that we need a coordinator of IP efforts to make sure that the United States remains a global leader in cutting edge technology development. What’s a technology you think is overhyped? Artificial intelligence. I was on a panel last week when we were talking about A.I. and filmmaking — will it end up displacing writers, actors, etc. Every time there's an evolution in technology, people tend to get very anxious and apprehensive: “Oh, what's going to come next? We're going to put people out of business and AI is going to take over” and so on. It's always like the sky is falling with these new technologies. I think AI will give us the opportunity to reset like we did in the age of the printing press. Everybody thought the printing press was going to put people out of business. But it's an opportunity for us to retrain in working with these technologies. This is an opportunity to take our workforce to a new level. We need programmers — AI cannot run on its own. We need people who can develop software and devices that use AI. We'll need folks who can monitor AI. We need legal reform that addresses some of the advancements that AI has brought to us. AI is a tool and we will learn to adapt to it, just like we adapted to the internet or electricity. It’s a little bit overrated to think human beings can now sit back like we're in the age of the Jetsons and do nothing. What book most shaped your conception of the future? “Rights Talk” by Mary Ann Glendon. In this country, we have lawmakers on both extremes arguing for their positions. But the majority of Americans get lost because we are not on the extremes. We're somewhere in the middle. So the middle is either forced to align with what the right passes or align with what the left passes. I was writing an article last year called “The Balanced Interest Approach” about when or if IP protections should be relaxed under certain circumstances. In 2020-2021, we were dealing with the pandemic. There were countries who couldn't afford the license to manufacture the COVID drugs. That's when developed countries come together and say: from a humanitarian perspective, what should be our response? I’m not necessarily saying get rid of IP rights for this stuff and that'll make the world better. I’m saying: is there a better option? From a humanitarian perspective, do we have an obligation to not only make this technology available but also to make sure these drugs are being adequately and safely manufactured? And just because you relax IP rights doesn't mean that folks now automatically have the capability to manufacture and distribute. Again, we start looking at end positions versus the middle and how we can start balancing our interests to meet the real need of the moment. What could government be doing regarding tech that it isn’t? Government could do a better job of talking about what's next for our workforce and actually providing access to retraining education. Recently, as part of another article I am writing, I’ve been thinking about how to close the innovator diversity gap. Right now, communities of color and women lag far behind White and Asian American males on inventorship. (At the current rate of convergence, it will take another 118 years to reach gender parity in inventorship, where an “inventor” is defined as an individual who holds a patent.) So how do we catch up? I think state and federal government could do a better job making access to educational opportunities truly equal — not on paper, but truly equal. If we're going to maintain our technological savvy and continue to innovate, we have to equip more people in this country to compete and work in a technological society. We are dropping the ball on this. We can't allow only portions of our population to be properly educated. Everyone has to be properly educated. What has surprised you most this year? What surprised me most is the support for relaxing IP protections, particularly on the patent side. We’re seeing evidence that other countries are providing incentives to protect the development of cutting edge technologies. It takes me by surprise that instead of taking a more creative approach to IP protections, we're sort of taking a step back and saying, well, maybe we should be rethinking our protections. Because if we didn't have such a robust IP system, maybe we could open up our economy to greater competition. But we also want to keep pushing the envelope on technological development. So is there some way — again — of finding again that balance of interests between encouraging competitiveness, creativity and the protection of rights for those who actually create? We need to consider a whole litany of factors to find a balance that allows this country to remain a global frontrunner in the development of cutting edge technologies — everything from socio-cultural to workforce job creation to health, safety and welfare. To just dismiss the concept of IP protections as unworkable or unattainable to me is short sighted.
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