NotebookLM’s “comprehensive briefing” of my notes for a forthcoming book on patent litigation missed one key point from the notes on the possibly “self-referential” nature of the patent system. So I simply asked the chatbot and it answered, based of course on my documents in NotebookLM (though unfortunately without any specific examples my notes provided):

Me: To what extent is the patent system “self-referential”?

NotebookLM: The patent system is described as self-referential or self-perpetuating to a significant extent, acting like a treadmill or arms race that creates constant churn and activity.

Here’s how the sources explain this self-referential nature:

• Encouraging More Patenting and Litigation
  • Success with patents encourages more patenting, which then leads to more litigation. This, in turn, shapes how people patent in the future. The system’s incentives are described as pushing inventors, companies, and the economy in different directions.
  • This continuous cycle creates a lot of activity and churn within the system. It acts as an “engine” that keeps running due to these self-perpetuating incentives.
• Feedback from Patenting to Invention
  • The process of patenting can influence future inventive activity, prompting inventors to think in terms of claims and how their work integrates into existing technological landscapes.
  • Interactions with the Patent Office examiner, who cites prior art and questions claims, forces inventors to clarify and frame their claims as a greater departure from what already exists, ideally pushing towards greater novelty or non-obviousness. This constitutes a “patent feedback” mechanism that can change the invention “itself” or at least the inventor’s “next one”.
  • The patent system’s structure and requirements, particularly the claim format, channels and routinizes inventive activity, encouraging a more systematic approach to innovation. It pushes inventors to both generalize their advances and narrowly differentiate them from prior art, a “threading the needle” dynamic.
• Promoting Progress through Competition and Incentives
  • While the system aims to “promote progress” by incentivizing invention and disclosure, it does so with inherent contradictions and complexities. The system is seen as a “schizo mishmash that pushes/pulls in multiple directions,” but it still functions as a system that aims to impose regularity on invention.
  • The patent system is not just a passive repository of inventions; the active involvement of would-be inventors in the system, driven by its requirements, shapes its creation.
  • It creates an additional area of competition that can be engaged in even without a tangible product. This can be seen as “competition by other means”.
  • The system creates incentives not only to invent but also to get a patent, which might happen even if the underlying invention has already occurred. This “incentive to patent” is a key aspect of its self-referential nature.
  • The system’s longevity itself suggests there isn’t an easily available substitute, reinforcing its persistent existence.
• Property Registry and Information System
  • Part of the patent system’s goal is to create and maintain a patent system — a property registry that draws property lines, similar to how land is registered.
  • The system encourages codification of inventions into tangible forms that can be valued, transferred, exchanged, and referenced. This “reification” makes inventions numbered, classified, and defined, turning technology into a tradable asset and enabling markets for technological knowledge.
  • The system is partly a system because of classification and citations, which connect patents and provide a “window into the knowledge economy”. The collection of prior art, which includes patents and applications, helps the system feed itself for future rounds of examination and potential invalidation. Indeed, the collection of prior art can become an end in itself.

In essence, the patent system’s self-referential nature stems from its ability to generate its own activity and direction, influencing not just the form of intellectual property but also the very act and subsequent shape of invention itself.

Me: Could you give me again that same summary of the “self-referential” theme, but this time with some specific examples from the sources?

NBLM’s revised summary now includes a “Specific Example” bullet for each major point, but these sound like rewordings, rather than specific examples.