Intellectual-property rights articles from across Nature Portfolio

The Data Provenance Initiative audits over 1,800 text artificial intelligence (AI) datasets, analysing trends, permissions of use and global representation. It exposes frequent errors on several major data hosting sites and offers tools for transparent and informed use of AI training data.

Researchers developed an open-hardware structured illumination microscopy add-on. This affordable upgrade provides super-resolution capabilities for normal optical microscopes. Detailed instructions enable easy reproduction to help democratize advanced microscopy.

A comprehensive analysis of the key properties of nanopesticides in controlling agricultural pests for crop enhancement shows a much higher efficacy compared with non-nano analogues, also for in-field trials.

Achieving ambitious climate goals requires the development of new technologies at rapid pace. Probst et al. analyse global patent data and find that a growth period of inventions from 1995 to 2012 was followed by a decline of ~6% annually, while invention remains concentrated in just a few countries.

Generative artificial-intelligence tools have been widely adopted across academia, but users might not be aware of all their inherent risks.

Errors in the US Patent and Trademark Office’s automated program to calculate patent expiration dates could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs to drug prices.

Analysis of medical artificial intelligence patents reveals substantial gaps in disclosure, underscoring the need for improved examination guidelines to ensure AI patent specifications contain enabling disclosures.

Japan will start allocating the ¥10 billion it promised to spend on institutional repositories to make the nation’s science free to read.

The unpredictability inherent to biological systems poses singular obstacles for biotechnology patents regarding the satisfaction of the enablement and written description requirements.

Administrative patent review procedures are an effective way of correcting erroneously granted biologic patents and may help promote timely drug competition for the benefit of patients and the US healthcare system.