本文探讨了一种利用专利制度来阻止潜在危害性技术发展的新颖思路。文章提出，如果一项技术可能对世界造成重大负面影响，那么提前开发并申请专利，然后通过法律手段阻止他人使用，可能是一种有效的策略。这种“积极专利垄断”的概念，需要发明者既具备高超的技术能力，又具备极强的利他主义精神。文章还讨论了这种策略在动物福利、全球灾难风险和环境污染等领域的潜在应用，以及可能面临的挑战，如研究豁免、专利时效性和跨国适用性等问题。最后，文章鼓励非营利组织购买这类专利，以进一步推动这种策略的实施。

💡 积极专利垄断的核心在于，通过预先发明并持有潜在有害技术的专利，阻止其被广泛应用，从而减少负面影响。这需要发明者既是技术专家，又是利他主义者。

🔬 积极专利垄断在多个领域具有应用潜力，例如，动物福利领域可以通过专利阻止工厂化养殖的恶劣技术；在全球灾难风险方面，可以阻止可能导致人工智能风险的技术；在环境污染方面，可以阻止高污染技术的传播。

⚖️ 积极专利垄断面临一些挑战，如研究豁免可能限制其在学术界的影响；专利的20年有效期可能无法覆盖所有情况；以及专利的地域性限制可能影响其在全球范围内的应用。

💰 非营利组织可以通过购买专利权来支持积极专利垄断，这为有社会责任感的发明者提供了一种新的途径，以阻止潜在的有害技术传播，并有机会以低于市场价的价格出售其专利。

Published on January 17, 2025 4:13 AM GMT

(Epistemic status: I know next to nothing about patent law, I'm just sharing some thoughts. I would love to be corrected by someone knowledgeable.)

If you think that some technology has a significant chance of ending the world (or having other huge negative externalities that outweigh the benefits), you might wish to postpone that technology. Convincing regulators or pressuring companies not to use a technology are two ways, but could another be to develop the technology first, patent it, and go to court to prevent anyone from using it?

“...patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art,[1] often through hardball legal tactics (frivolous litigation, vexatious litigation, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), chilling effects, etc.) Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question.”

-Wikipedia, emphasis added.

A quick search couldn't find any examples of inventors doing this, though there are plenty of inventors who regret their inventions. There's an alternate history where the inventors of vaping or pop up ads realized that their inventions, although technically legal and extremely profitable, would cause huge harm, patented them, and prevented any copycats. 

If activist patent trolls can exist, then supporting them can be a hugely beneficial thing to do. By definition, an activist patent troll must:

In order to invent a valuable technology, they must be among the most knowledgeable in a certain subject. The activist patent trolls for biology must be master biologists, for computer science they must be master computer scientists, etc.In order to give up the profits of the technology, they must be extremely altruistic.

Both of these qualities make activist patent trolls among the best decision makers when it comes to the future of technology. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the political philosophy of ethicotechnotrollocracy.^[1]

Activist patent trolls can contribute substantially to every major Effective Altruism priority:

Animal-welfare activist patent trolls can invent new ways to profitably worsen the lives of animals and patent them. If the horrid inventions powering factory farms like battery cages had been patented by an animal lover and denied the farms for twenty years, then billions of animals would have been better off. Global catastrophic risks can be mitigated. For example, if a researcher designed a technique that makes AI more dangerous, then patented it, then that would reduce AI x-risk. (I’ve personally ideated a few ideas that might fall into this category.)Inventing new polluting technologies and patenting it can prevent countries in the intersection of “has patent enforcement” and “does not have pollution controls” from using it, improving global health. India falls into this category.

Issues with activist patent trolling:

There’s a thing called a “Research Exemption” which may prevent activist patents from having much effect on academia. Despite this, if a research direction doesn’t have industry backing and cannot be applied usefully, research usually diminishes. For example, since mirror life is mostly an academic pursuit and not an industry one, activist patents would not have much effect. On the other hand, if for example Flash Attention was patented by an activist patent troll, then transformers would be much slower to use, AI technology wouldn’t be so profitable, and so there would be fewer researchers working on potentially dangerous capabilities, even if the researchers themselves were allowed to use flash attention.^[2]Patents only last twenty years, so if an inventor is more than twenty years ahead of her time, then her attempt to slow down the technology by inventing it first backfired. There are large debates about which inventions would have been invented soon anyways even if a particular inventor had not invented it. My (uninformed) position is that most profitable inventions are invented within twenty years of them becoming possible. Each expert, when considering whether to invent something to activist-patent it, should consider how soon someone else would create it.With AI technology, labs are secretive and could likely get away with using capabilities-increasing patented technology. Thoughts?Patents mostly only apply within countries, so activist patents would have limited scope. Since right now the US is the lead in research and industry, US-based patents can still have significant influence over the use of technology in the rest of the world.There’s a sense that activist-inventing-and-patenting is not a neglected issue, since there are countless people trying to make any profitable technologies they can. Even so, I think it is a problem that inventors are not aware of this option, so raising awareness and making it easier to be an activist patent troll could be significantly neglected cause areas.^[3]

What can be done now?

Nonprofit organizations can buy patents from inventors. This would involve the inventor filling out an application to convince the nonprofit of the profitability and negative externalities of the invention. The nonprofit can then go to court if someone infringes the patent. Altruistic inventors would be willing to sell their patent rights to the nonprofit at a discount relative to industry.It makes sense that few people have tried to be activist patent trolls, since good people will rarely consider that a career of “design the most harmful yet profitable inventions possible” can actually be a significant force for good. If activist patent trolling is possible, then spreading the word among the people most likely to create harmful inventions can be hugely impactful.

1. ^{^}

   ethical (ethico), skill/craft/expertise (techno), troll rule (trollocracy)

2. ^{^}

   Assuming that Flash Attention can be patented. Software patent law is tricky. Is "Flash Attention" an 'abstract idea' (cannot be patented) or 'a product of engineering' (can be patented)?

3. ^{^}

    Again, assuming it is an option. I’m no expert in patent law.

Discuss