AI Drug Discovery: Who Owns the IP Rights?

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Episode Summary

When an AI model designs a novel therapeutic molecule or predicts an enzyme structure, who legally owns the resulting intellectual property? In this episode of Darshan Talks / KF Deep Dive, host Darshan Kulkarni turns the microphone over to Stu Angus (Founder of Scriptome.AI) for a reverse interview exploring the legal, regulatory, and philosophical chasms surrounding AI-generated pharma assets.

Together, they confront the core requirement of "human ingenuity" in patent law across the U.S. and Europe, examining why fully autonomous AI discoveries risk being legally unpatentable and open to generic exploitation. From patient consent scope in mega-tech partnerships (Eli Lilly, NVIDIA, Anthropic) to the limits of trade secrets, this episode provides a vital roadmap for biotech founders and life science executives navigating the AI revolution.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• The Human Inventorship Barrier: Why patent offices routinely reject AI as a sole inventor and how to establish "human ingenuity" in lab notebooks and prompts.
• Big Tech & Pharma Partnerships: Vetting patient consent when sharing trial data across multi-party platforms like Claude or NVIDIA.
• The In-Silico Valuation Trap: Why multi-billion-dollar AI licensing deals can collapse if underlying assets lack verified human inventorship.
• Patents vs. Trade Secrets: The limits of relying on trade secrets for AI-generated molecules under increasing FDA transparency rules.
• AI Personhood & Emergent Rights: A philosophical deep dive into whether autonomous AI systems could eventually claim legal rights over their own creations.

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