“Unraveling the Legal Labyrinth: Can AI Revolutionize Pharma Without Copyright Catastrophes?”
Our experts broke these risks down into two broad categories — legal and reputational. In addition to copyright infringement, patent infringement is a major concern, warns Chris McSpiritt, vice president of life sciences strategy at Domino Data Lab. Drugs are patented based on their molecular structure; if an AI model suggests a treatment candidate patented by a competitor — perhaps due to its unintentional inclusion in a third-party dataset — this could lead to inadvertent patent infringement. Without safeguards, companies may unknowingly invest in R&D for a product they cannot legally develop. McSpiritt notes that many organizations already have processes for checking patent conflicts, and the introduction of AI reinforces the importance of proficiency in this area.