Artificiële Intelligentie & Recht
Innovation, Quantum-AI Technology & Law
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Blog over Kunstmatige Intelligentie, Quantum, Deep Learning, Blockchain en Big Data Law

Blog over juridische, sociale, ethische en policy aspecten van Kunstmatige Intelligentie, Quantum Computing, Sensing & Communication, Augmented Reality en Robotica, Big Data Wetgeving en Machine Learning Regelgeving. Kennisartikelen inzake de EU AI Act, de Data Governance Act, cloud computing, algoritmes, privacy, virtual reality, blockchain, robotlaw, smart contracts, informatierecht, ICT contracten, online platforms, apps en tools. Europese regels, auteursrecht, chipsrecht, databankrechten en juridische diensten AI recht.

Music Law at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague
Music Law at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague

Returning to my old flame for 1 day: looking forward to teaching music law at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague tomorrow! https://www.koncon.nl/en/

It's nice not having to speak or write about AI, data or quantum technology for a change... ;)

Teaching music law at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague

I am giving an in person guest lecture to a small group of students at the Amare - Den Haag, and it is live streamed to the rest of the department. The Amare is home to Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) as well, one of the world’s leading contemporary dance & ballet companies, dedicated to creation, research, innovation and talent development. https://www.ndt.nl/en/

Using self-produced audio fragments and practical examples, we cover 18 music law topics ranging from registering intellectual property rights to strategic contract negotiations. The tracks I prepared are played from my Powerpoint into a phenomenal pair of Bowers & Wilkins monitors, the ultimate sound system. https://www.muziekenrecht.nl/blog/2017/6/music-licensing-in-the-netherlands-movies-games-legal-aspects

Looking back in nostalgia to the cross-disciplinary masterclasses I had the pleasure of teaching in recent years inter alia at Leiden University, Utrecht University and Conservatorium Maastricht. https://www.musicajuridica.nl/blog/2017/5/gastcollege-intellectueel-eigendom-conservatorium-maastricht

CPO Radboud University seminar at Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam

Absolute highlight was the postgraduate CPO Radboud University seminar at Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam on music & law, which included a public domain quiz musically framed by an ad hoc ensemble of Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest musicians featuring the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Maarten Feteris on piano and me (Mauritz Kop) on clarinet es/bes, performing bespoke Mozart, Beethoven and Bach arrangements. https://www.muziekenrecht.nl/blog/2018/cpo-seminar-muziek-recht-concertgebouw-amsterdam

Kudos to the KonCon management for making sure their talented students have firsthand access to vital information about the inner workings of the music & entertainment industry!

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Intellectual Property, Licenties, Muziekrecht, Naburige rechtenMauritz KopMusic, Law, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Art
Integrating Bespoke IP Regimes for Quantum Technology into National Security Policy
Integrating Bespoke IP Regimes for Quantum Technology into National Security Policy

Should countries be able to treat quantum technology the way they treat fissionable materials—suspending patents and trade-secret enforcement when national security demands it? That is the provocative proposal at the center of Integrating Bespoke IP Regimes for Quantum Technology into National Security Policy, a 2021 Stanford working paper by Mauritz Kop and Mark Brongersma, posted as a preprint. The authors argue that quantum needs innovation-policy mechanisms cut to the physics of the very small, then folded into national security law.

A bespoke regime for a dual-use technology

Quantum, the authors observe, is an early-stage family of technologies—comparable to the transistor in the 1960s—whose dual-use character spans civil benefit and military harm. Because appropriable value lives simultaneously in hardware, software, and trade secrets, a legal regime borrowed wholesale from software or biotech will misfire. The paper surveys a toolkit drawn from adjacent fields—AI, biotechnology, nanotechnology, semiconductors, and nuclear—and argues that intellectual property and antitrust law must work in concert so that quantum does not deepen existing inequalities. Their guiding stance is twofold and deliberately paradoxical: treat quantum as genuinely unprecedented, but also learn from the history of adjacent technologies. This work runs alongside the market-power analysis Kop would later develop in intellectual property in quantum computing and market power, carrying the inquiry from competition theory into the harder terrain of national security law.

Pro-quantum antitrust and democratized access

Concretely, the authors weigh pro-quantum antitrust enforcement, the waiving and pledging of IP including compulsory licenses, and the democratization of essential technology. They confront the tension honestly: leading quantum startups have relied on IP protection—especially trade secrets—to raise capital, yet enclosing the foundational concepts of quantum computation and communication risks entrenching winner-takes-all dynamics against a community consensus on the right to equal access. Beyond IP, they catalog prizes, subsidies, state funding, and education as further levers for incentivizing progress.

A new TRIPS security exception

The paper's signature proposal is a new Article 73(b)(iv) security exception to the TRIPS Agreement, giving states the strategic option to exclude quantum technologies from IP protection—mirroring how the existing exception treats fissionable materials, and capable of serving either disclosure or secrecy. Situating quantum within a longer pendulum of open and closed innovation, the authors warn against a convergence of overstretched IP rights and progress made in secret, and close with a call for further multidisciplinary research. The result is a structured agenda for designing quantum innovation policy attuned to both its physics and its geopolitics, complementing the call for a strategic technology alliance among democratic countries.

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Intellectual Property, Quantum Technology, GeopoliticsHenry QuentirMauritz Kop, Intellectual Property, National Security, Quantum Technology, Quantum Governance, Geopolitics, Policy, Innovation, TTLF, TRIPS, Antitrust, Trade Secrets, Compulsory Licenses, Mark Brongersma, Dual Use, Public Domain
Mauritz Kop speaks at Center for Quantum Networks Conference
Mauritz Kop speaks at Center for Quantum Networks Conference

Mauritz Kop will be speaking about Legal & Ethical Guidelines for Quantum Technology on Saturday Nov. 20 at 9:15-10:15 a.m. Phoenix, Arizona time (GMT-7) as part of the Quantum Technologies, Law, and Public Policy: A Global Perspective Conference. This two-day online event is hosted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Center for Quantum Networks at the University of Arizona, and the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Speakers include a cross-disciplinary line-up of quantum & law scholars from UC Berkeley School of Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, the University of Arizona, Sabanci University, Loyola Law School, Lund University, and Stanford Law School.

Quantum Technologies, Law, and Public Policy: A Global Perspective

You can find the conference’s agenda and registration here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mauritzkop_quantum-technologies-law-and-public-policy-activity-6863066359228583936-peu9/

Besides explaining quantum physics and discussing regulation, the focus of our Quantum Technologies, Law, and Public Policy: A Global Perspective Conference lies also on developing countries and their challenge with the future of quantum technologies. This is arguably the first comprehensive conference on quantum technology and the law in the U.S..

The Quantum Internet

The Center for Quantum Networks (CQN) is taking on one of the great engineering challenges of the 21st century: to lay the technical and social foundations of the quantum internet. The Quantum Internet will surpass the capabilities of today’s internet because of the unique advantages of entanglement—a coordination of the quantum states of particles serving as computational bits that is not present in the realms of classical physics. https://cqn-erc.arizona.edu/

Legal & Ethical Guidelines for Quantum Technology

The main takeaways of my Legal & Ethical Guidelines for Quantum Technology presentation are:

1. The quantum community should establish a practical code of quantum ethics to make the application of quantum technologies equitable and safe.

2. The world needs a risk-based legal-ethical framework for quantum technologies that mitigates risks and maximizes opportunities, the burdens and gains of which should be equally distributed across members of society.

3. Since technology is never neutral, we should embed democratic values and human rights principles into the architecture and infrastructure of our quantum systems, of course without rendering them useless.

4. We should develop quantum technology impact assessments in the form of codes of conduct, best practices and moral guides that are implemented by inclusive, diverse multidisciplinary teams, and utilize these tools to raise quantum awareness and trust, promote ethical quantum by design, and even proactively ensure regulatory compliance and legal conformity, which includes standardization and certification.

After registering for the conference you will receive the Zoom link that gives access to the event.

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Quantum TechnologyMauritz Kopquantum, law, ethics, governance, policy
Quantum ELSPI: Ethical, Legal, Social and Policy Implications of Quantum Technology
Quantum ELSPI: Ethical, Legal, Social and Policy Implications of Quantum Technology

Call for Papers Quantum ELSPI

Delighted to announce that the Quantum ELSPI call for papers is now open! AIRecht Director & Stanford Law School TTLF Fellow Mauritz Kop has the honor to guest-edit a Topical Collection for Digital Society, a new journal edited by Luciano Floridi (Oxford Internet Institute). This project is a Stanford/Oxford collaboration that aims to explore uncharted territories of Ethical, Legal, Social and Policy Implications of Quantum Technology. Articles should be submitted before 15 February 2022 and will be double blind peer reviewed. Accepted articles will be published by Springer Nature.

You can find the Quantum ELSPI collection page here: https://link.springer.com/collections/eiebhdhagd.

Download the Springer Nature Quantum-ELSPI Call for Papers here: TC_Quantum ELSPI_Call for papers

ELSPI stratagems for quantum technology

Anticipating spectacular advancements in real-world quantum driven products and services, the time is ripe for governments, academia and the market to prepare regulatory and business strategies that balance their societal impact. This topical collection seeks to provide informed suggestions on how to maximize benefits and mitigate risks of applied quantum technology. It intends to deliver insights and actionable recommendations on how and when to address identified opportunities and challenges, which can then be refined into plausible, evidence-based policy decisions by stakeholders across the world.

Special edition of Digital Society

In this special edition of Digital Society, we aim for scholars to reflect on the multifaceted questions associated with Quantum ELSPI. In addition to learning from history and connecting quantum to other big picture trends, quantum should be treated as something completely unique and unprecedented. We especially welcome cross-disciplinary contributions that look beyond research silos and integrate law, economic theory, ethics, sociology, philosophy of science, quantum information science, and sustainable innovation policy, and that consider how to improve ELSPI stratagems for quantum technology. We encourage authors to be pioneers in this complex, and at times counterintuitive field.

Multifaceted questions associated with Quantum ELSPI

Questions and topics that could be addressed by contributions in the topical collection are not restricted to, but could include the following:

-Potential strategies for industries facing disruption such as the cybersecurity industry and financial institutions. What role could antitrust law, intellectual property, prizes, fines, funding, taxes, lifelong learning and labor mobility play while incentivizing innovation?

-How should dual use applications be managed? How do we balance freedom with control? What role could a Quantum Treaty play to make our world a safer place?

-The creation of a list of quantum-specific themes, goals, benefits and risks that need to be addressed by universal, overarching principles of responsible quantum design and application, including a definition of hi-risk quantum-systems.

-How can policy makers learn from history and adjacent fields - such as AI, biotechnology, nanotechnology, semiconductors and nuclear - when regulating exponential innovation and ensuring equal access to quantum computing, sensing and the quantum internet? How can winner take all effects and a quantum divide be prevented? To what extent does governing digitization driven by classical computing paradigms (binary digits) differ from governing quantum computing (qubits)?

-It is not inconceivable that the development and uptake of transnational quantum principles will run along the lines of democratic and authoritarian tech governance models. Against that background, how can we embed cultural norms, liberal values, democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms in globally accepted interoperability standards?

-How can we implement ethically aligned design into our quantum systems architecture and infrastructure? How can quantum technology impact assessments help achieve these goals?

Guest-Editor Quantum ELSPI: Mauritz Kop (Stanford Law School, Stanford University)

Editor-in-Chief Digital Society: Luciano Floridi (Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University)

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Ethics, Law of AI, University, Stanford, Quantum ELSPI, OxfordMauritz KopOxford Internet InstituteQuantum ELSPI, Ethics, Law, Sociology, philosophy of science, economic theory, quantum information science, sustainable innovation policy, Intellectual Property Law, Digital Society, Topical Collection, Luciano Floridi, Mauritz Kop, Oxford Internet Institute, Stanford Law School, Springer Nature, Oxford University, AI, biotechnology, nanotechnology, semiconductors, nuclear, quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networks, governance, regulation, Quantum Technology
EU Artificial Intelligence Act: The European Approach to AI
EU Artificial Intelligence Act: The European Approach to AI

Stanford - Vienna Transatlantic Technology Law Forum, Transatlantic Antitrust and IPR Developments, Stanford University, Issue No. 2/2021

New Stanford tech policy research: “EU Artificial Intelligence Act: The European Approach to AI”.

Download the article here: Kop_EU AI Act: The European Approach to AI

EU regulatory framework for AI

On 21 April 2021, the European Commission presented the Artificial Intelligence Act. This Stanford Law School contribution lists the main points of the proposed regulatory framework for AI.

The Act seeks to codify the high standards of the EU trustworthy AI paradigm, which requires AI to be legally, ethically and technically robust, while respecting democratic values, human rights and the rule of law. The draft regulation sets out core horizontal rules for the development, commodification and use of AI-driven products, services and systems within the territory of the EU, that apply to all industries.

Legal sandboxes fostering innovation

The EC aims to prevent the rules from stifling innovation and hindering the creation of a flourishing AI ecosystem in Europe. This is ensured by introducing various flexibilities, including the application of legal sandboxes that afford breathing room to AI developers.

Sophisticated ‘product safety regime’

The EU AI Act introduces a sophisticated ‘product safety framework’ constructed around a set of 4 risk categories. It imposes requirements for market entrance and certification of High-Risk AI Systems through a mandatory CE-marking procedure. To ensure equitable outcomes, this pre-market conformity regime also applies to machine learning training, testing and validation datasets.

Pyramid of criticality

The AI Act draft combines a risk-based approach based on the pyramid of criticality, with a modern, layered enforcement mechanism. This means, among other things, that a lighter legal regime applies to AI applications with a negligible risk, and that applications with an unacceptable risk are banned. Stricter regulations apply as risk increases.

Enforcement at both Union and Member State level

The draft regulation provides for the installation of a new enforcement body at Union level: the European Artificial Intelligence Board (EAIB). At Member State level, the EAIB will be flanked by national supervisors, similar to the GDPR’s oversight mechanism. Fines for violation of the rules can be up to 6% of global turnover, or 30 million euros for private entities.

CE-marking for High-Risk AI Systems

In line with my recommendations, Article 49 of the Act requires high-risk AI and data-driven systems, products and services to comply with EU benchmarks, including safety and compliance assessments. This is crucial because it requires AI infused products and services to meet the high technical, legal and ethical standards that reflect the core values of trustworthy AI. Only then will they receive a CE marking that allows them to enter the European markets. This pre-market conformity mechanism works in the same manner as the existing CE marking: as safety certification for products traded in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Trustworthy AI by Design: ex ante and life-cycle auditing

Responsible, trustworthy AI by design requires awareness from all parties involved, from the first line of code. Indispensable tools to facilitate this awareness process are AI impact and conformity assessments, best practices, technology roadmaps and codes of conduct. These tools are executed by inclusive, multidisciplinary teams, that use them to monitor, validate and benchmark AI systems. It will all come down to ex ante and life-cycle auditing.

The new European rules will forever change the way AI is formed. Pursuing trustworthy AI by design seems like a sensible strategy, wherever you are in the world.

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Artificial Intelligence, Artificiële Intelligentie, Certification, European Law, Europees recht, Kunstmatige Intelligentie, Machine Learning, Stanford, WetgevingMauritz KopStanford Law SchoolEU Artificial Intelligence Act, regulatory framework, Pyramid of criticality, pre-market conformity, CE-marking, Certification, Risk-based approach, High-Risk AI Systems, Impact Assessment, Trustworthy AI by Design, life-cycle auditing, Ethics and Responsible AI, Worldwide standards, Extraterritorial effect, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Data Act, GDPR, FFD, MDR, Awareness, Stanford - Vienna Transatlantic Technology Law Forum, Stanford University, European Commission, Product safety regime, Machine learning trainingdatasets, Democratic values, human rights, rule of law, legal sandboxes, innovation, flourishing AI-ecosystem, Legal Compliance
AI in Healthcare: Mauritz Kop Teaches Legal and Ethical Frameworks at the SmartHealth Masterclass
AI in Healthcare: Mauritz Kop Teaches Legal and Ethical Frameworks at the SmartHealth Masterclass

Medical AI earns trust only when its legal and ethical preconditions are designed in from the start. Mauritz Kop taught exactly that module at the SmartHealth masterclass Kunstmatige intelligentie in de zorg (October 29–30, 2020, Van der Valk Houten) — a two-day program for the healthcare professionals and innovators who buy, build and validate clinical AI in Dutch hospitals.

Law as a design input for clinical AI

Privacy, IP, liability and fundamental rights: the masterclass treated legal requirements not as after-the-fact paperwork but as design inputs for AI applications that touch patient data and patient safety. A diagnostic-support algorithm is never just a model — it is a GDPR processing operation, frequently a medical device under the MDR or IVDR, and a node in a liability chain that runs from developer through hospital to treating physician. Reading a product through all of those lenses before procurement was the working method of the module.

An interdisciplinary faculty

Clinicians and builders from Pacmed, Radboudumc, Attendi and Syntho taught alongside the legal module — grounding artificial intelligence governance in the daily reality of Dutch hospitals and health-tech startups, from intensive-care prediction models to synthetic data as a privacy-preserving alternative to raw patient records. Legal teaching that never touches a confusion matrix stays abstract; technical teaching that never touches the lawful-basis question ships unusable products. This program put both in one room.

From White Paper to binding law

The 2020 timing mattered: the European Commission's AI White Paper had just framed the risk-based approach, and healthcare AI was widely expected to land in the high-risk tier. The EU has since adopted the AI Act, whose high-risk obligations — risk management, data governance, human oversight, conformity assessment — now interlock with the MDR/IVDR regime, turning the masterclass's design-it-in message from policy signal into binding law on a phased timetable.

A continuing teaching line

From Maasstad Hospital to SmartHealth: educating the people who buy, build and use medical AI is a structural part of AIRecht's practice — see also the Artificial Intelligence Impact Assessment, the ex-ante review framework that anticipated exactly this compliance-by-design logic. The lesson travels beyond healthcare: a system whose legal preconditions are an afterthought meets its regulator at the worst possible moment, while a system that carries its compliance evidence by design meets the same regulator with the file already open. For anyone deciding on medical AI procurement today, that difference is the whole game.

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Healthcare, Artificial Intelligence, Kunstmatige IntelligentieHenry QuentirSmartHealth, masterclass, medical AI, health law, AI governance, education
De Wet op de Artificiële Intelligentie
De Wet op de Artificiële Intelligentie

Een bewerkte versie van deze bijdrage is gepubliceerd op platform VerderDenken.nl van het Centrum voor Postacademisch Juridisch Onderwijs (CPO) van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. https://www.ru.nl/cpo/verderdenken/columns/wet-artificiele-intelligentie-belangrijkste-punten/

Nieuwe regels voor AI gedreven producten, diensten en systemen

Op 21 april 2021 presenteerde de Europese Commissie haar langverwachte Wet op de Artificiële Intelligentie (AI). Deze concept Verordening geeft regels voor de ontwikkeling, commodificatie en gebruik van AI gedreven producten, diensten en systemen binnen het territorium van de Europese Unie. Het was bemoedigend te zien dat het team van President Ursula von der Leyen een belangrijk aantal van onze strategische aanbevelingen op het gebied van de regulering van AI heeft overgenomen, danwel zelfstandig tot dezelfde conclusies is gekomen.

Doelstellingen wettelijk kader voor AI

De concept Verordening biedt horizontale overkoepelende kernregels voor kunstmatige intelligentie die op alle industrieën (verticals) van toepassing zijn. De wet beoogt de hoge maatstaven van het EU Trustworthy AI paradigma te codificeren, dat voorschrijft dat AI wettig, ethisch en technisch robuust dient te zijn en daartoe 7 vereisten hanteert.

De Wet op de Artificiële Intelligentie heeft de volgende 4 doelstellingen:

“1. ervoor zorgen dat AI-systemen die in de Unie in de handel worden gebracht en gebruikt, veilig zijn en de bestaande wetgeving inzake grondrechten en waarden van de Unie eerbiedigen;

2. rechtszekerheid garanderen om investeringen en innovatie in AI te vergemakkelijken;

3. het beheer en de doeltreffende handhaving van de bestaande wetgeving inzake grondrechten en veiligheidsvoorschriften die van toepassing zijn op AI-systemen, verbeteren;

4. de ontwikkeling van een eengemaakte markt voor wettige, veilige en betrouwbare AI-toepassingen vergemakkelijken en marktversnippering voorkomen.“

Risico gebaseerde aanpak kunstmatig intelligente applicaties

Om deze doelstellingen te realiseren combineert de concept Artificial Intelligence Act een risk-based approach op basis van de pyramid of criticality, met een modern, gelaagd handhavingsmechanisme. Dit houdt onder meer in dat er voor AI applicaties met een verwaarloosbaar risico een licht wettelijk regime geldt, en onacceptabel risico applicaties verboden worden. Tussen deze 2 uitersten gelden er naarmate het risico toeneemt strengere voorschriften. Deze variëren van vrijblijvende zelfregulerende soft law impact assessments met gedragscodes, tot zwaar, multidisciplinair extern geauditeerde compliance vereisten inzake kwaliteit, veiligheid en transparantie inclusief risicobeheer, monitoring, certificering, benchmarking, validatie, documentatieplicht en markttoezicht gedurende de levenscyclus van de toepassing.

Handhaving en governance

De definitie van hoog risico AI applicaties binnen de diverse industriële sectoren is nog niet in steen gehouwen. Een ondubbelzinnige risicotaxonomie zal bijdragen aan rechtszekerheid en biedt belanghebbenden een adequaat antwoord op vragen over aansprakelijkheid en verzekering. Om ruimte voor innovatie door SME’s waaronder tech-startups te waarborgen, worden er flexibele AI regulatory sandboxes geïntroduceerd en is er IP Action Plan opgesteld voor intellectueel eigendom. De concept Verordening voorziet tenslotte in de installatie van een nieuwe handhavende instantie op Unieniveau: het European Artificial Intelligence Board. De EAIB zal op lidstaatniveau worden geflankeerd door nationale toezichthouders.

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Artificiële Intelligentie, AVG / GDPR, Europees recht, Kunstmatige Intelligentie, Law of AI, Stanford, TTLF, UniversityMauritz KopAIRechtWet op de Artificiële Intelligentie, Europese Verordening AI, Wettelijk Kader, Risico gebaseerde aanpak, Pyramid of Criticality, Handhaving, Governance, Regulering, CE-markering, Trustworthy-AI by Design, Standaard, Norm, Values, Principes, Juridisch-Ethisch Raamwerk, Mauritz Kop, CPO, Radboud Universiteit, VerderDenken, NL AIC, Transatlantic Technology Law Forum, Europese AI Alliantie, Ursula Von Der Leyen, DGCONNECT, Europese Commissie, Stanford Law School
Mauritz Kop Presents Quantum: Waive or Pledge IP at IPSC 2021, Cardozo Law School
Mauritz Kop Presents Quantum: Waive or Pledge IP at IPSC 2021, Cardozo Law School

IPSC 2021 at Cardozo: on August 4, 2021, Mauritz Kop presented Quantum: Waive or Pledge IP at the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, hosted online by Cardozo Law School — putting the intellectual-property architecture of quantum technology before the IP academy while the field's patent landscape was still forming.

A real policy dilemma in three words

Waive or pledge: if quantum computing's basic building blocks rest on decades of publicly funded research, should foundational exclusive rights be waived for defined categories — or kept but pledged, FRAND-style, against assertion? The presentation developed both instruments and their hybrids, from quantum-specific patent pledges to compulsory licensing and shorter, innovation-cycle-calibrated protection terms — an IP architecture for a technology whose patent landscape was consolidating faster than its governance.

Physics that unsettles doctrine

The no-cloning theorem forbids perfectly copying an arbitrary unknown quantum state — friction at the foundations for IP regimes predicated on the act of duplication. A law built around copying meets quantum states that cannot, even in principle, be copied; the legal-ethical groundwork for that collision is laid in Establishing a Legal-Ethical Framework for Quantum Technology.

From workshop draft to Berkeley Technology Law Journal

The critiqued draft matured into the Berkeley Technology Law Journal article mapping patents, trade secrets and copyright onto quantum hardware, algorithms and software — and arguing where bespoke instruments serve innovation better than one-size-fits-all exclusivity. The IPSC room's questions — incentives, successor liability, category definition — made the published version sturdier. That is what the works-in-progress format is for: short presentations, dense Q&A, no proceedings, everything in service of the draft.

Patent scholars meet information-law scholars

Cardozo's host program tilts the IPSC room toward information-law questions — data, platforms, access — so a waive-or-pledge proposal had to satisfy both the incentive logic of the patent scholars and the access logic of the information-law side. A proposal that survives both audiences is closer to policy-ready than one bred in either camp alone.

Arriving early, on purpose

In August 2021 quantum technology was still mostly a physics story in the legal academy. Presenting a worked-out IP architecture then put waive-or-pledge on the scholarly agenda while policy could still shape the landscape rather than litigate it afterward. The instrument-matching logic — pledge where the ecosystem polices itself, waive where concentration would gate basic science, keep compulsory licensing in reserve as the credible threat that keeps the voluntary instruments honest — has only gained relevance as the quantum patent landscape has consolidated since.

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Intellectual Property, Academics, ConferenceHenry QuentirIPSC, Cardozo Law, quantum computing, intellectual property, patent pledges
Cyber Week 2021 Tel Aviv University Israel
Cyber Week 2021 Tel Aviv University Israel

AIRecht Director Mauritz Kop will speak at Cyber Week 2021 Tel Aviv University Israel, and participate in the Panel 'Debating Collective Cyber Defense for Democracies'. He will present his Stanford essay ‘Democratic Countries Should Form a Strategic Tech Alliance’ on July 22nd at 20:00 Israel time, see: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814409

Cyber Week 2021 hosts a range of distinguished speakers from across the globe, including the Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett, see: https://cw2021.b2b-wizard.com/expo/speakers

Debating Collective Cyber Defense for Democracies

Line-up and speakers of the ‘Debating Collective Cyber Defense for Democracies’ panel (notice the strong Dutch@Stanford representation):

Keynote: Ambassador Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, Ambassador-at-Large for Cyber Diplomacy at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Lectures by:

Prof. Chris Demchak, Strategic and Operational Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

Lior Tabansky, Ph.D., (Moderator), Head of Research Development, Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, Tel Aviv University

Mauritz Kop, Stanford Law School TTLF Fellow, Founder of MusicaJuridica, and Strategic Intellectual Property Lawyer at AIRecht

Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center; International Policy Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University

See the complete agenda at: https://cw2021.b2b-wizard.com/expo/agenda

Democratic Countries Should Form a Strategic Tech Alliance

Kop’s essay titled ‘Democratic Countries Should Form a Strategic Tech Alliance’ concludes that to prevent authoritarianism from gaining ground, democratic governments should do four things: (1) inaugurate a Strategic Tech Alliance, (2) set worldwide core rules, interoperability & conformity standards for key 4IR technologies such as AI, quantum, 6G and Virtual Reality (VR), (3) win the race for 4IR technology supremacy, and (4) actively embed our common democratic norms, principles and values into the architecture and infrastructure of our technology.

REGISTER for the conference following the link: https://cw2021.b2b-wizard.com/expo/home

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Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Democracy, Authoritarianism, Cybersecurity, Cloud ComputingMauritz Kopcybersecurity, national security, data security, AI, quantum, Democracy versus Authoritarianism, 5G and 6G, Strategic Tech Alliance, values, human rights
Beyond IP Innovation Law: The Bigger Picture
Beyond IP Innovation Law: The Bigger Picture

Intellectual property is a powerful driver of innovation—but it is not the only one. In Beyond IP Innovation Law: The Bigger Picture, posted as a preprint and forthcoming in the European Media, IP & IT Law Review (MR-Int), Mauritz Kop argues that a serious innovation policy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution must reach past exclusive rights toward a fuller toolkit: prizes, grants, antitrust, commons-based production, open innovation, and a vital public domain.

Sustainable innovation law beyond IP

The essay frames "sustainable innovation law" as the interface between creativity, technology, society, and law—combining information law, antitrust, consumer protection, and fundamental rights with AI, machine learning, big data, quantum computing, CRISPR-Cas9, and virtual reality. Its test is normative: innovation counts as sustainable only when it is ethical and social, economically beneficial, conducive to well-being, and supportive of the environment. Once IP loses its monopoly on the policy imagination, a longer menu of incentive mechanisms—competitions, subsidies, tort law, market regulation, R&D tax incentives—comes into view, and choosing among them becomes the real task of the lawmaker.

Why AI can do without IP incentives

Applied to artificial intelligence, the argument is pointed: the classical justifications for IP are weak when applied to AI, and AI "can do without IP incentives," with narrow exceptions such as a medical AI system whose costly clinical trials might warrant patents or, equally, public subsidy. Human authorship and inventorship remain the normative anchor, and machine output that crosses an "autonomy threshold" should fall into the public domain under a model Kop calls Res Publicae ex Machina. The essay also presses for broad text-and-data-mining freedom—even an articulated right to process data for machine learning—so that training datasets, a prerequisite for supervised learning, do not become an IP chokepoint. This complements his theoretical and empirical work on quantum computing and intellectual property law.

A horizontal-vertical innovation architecture

Because incentives and risks vary by sector and by technology, the paper proposes a horizontal-vertical design: horizontal core rules for all 4IR technologies, plus vertical, risk-based regimes organized around a "pyramid of criticality" from low risk at the base to existential risk at the top. The calibration is physics-aware—an open posture may suit AI, while quantum technology warrants more ab initio control given its potential anthropogenic risks, a precautionary tilt Kop develops further in his work on ethics in the quantum age. Written against the European Commission's April 2021 draft AI Regulation, the essay reads that proposal as a "North Star" and urges that safety norms, interoperability standards, and the Trustworthy AI doctrine be embedded directly into the design of technology, monitored through life-cycle impact assessments. The bigger picture, in short, is an innovation law built for purpose—not the reflexive extension of twentieth-century IP.

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Intellectual Property, Innovation, Law of AIHenry QuentirMauritz Kop, Intellectual Property, Innovation, Public Domain, Copyright, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, Law of AI, Sustainable Innovation Law, Open Innovation, TDM, Res Publicae ex Machina, 4IR, EU AI Act, MR-Int
Quantum Computing and Intellectual Property Law
Quantum Computing and Intellectual Property Law

Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2021

New Stanford University Beyond IP Innovation Law research article: “Quantum Computing and Intellectual Property Law”.

By Mauritz Kop

Citation: Kop, Mauritz, Quantum Computing and Intellectual Property Law (April 8, 2021). Berkeley Technology Law Journal 2021, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp 101-115, February 8, 2022, https://btlj.org/2022/02/quantum-computing-and-intellectual-property-law/

Download the article here: Kop_QC and IP Law BTLJ

Please find a short abstract below:

Intellectual property (IP) rights & the Quantum Computer

What types of intellectual property (IP) rights can be vested in the components of a scalable quantum computer? Are there sufficient market-set innovation incentives for the development and dissemination of quantum software and hardware structures? Or is there a need for open source ecosystems, enrichment of the public domain and even democratization of quantum technology? The article explores possible answers to these tantalizing questions.

IP overprotection leads to exclusive exploitation rights for first movers

The article demonstrates that strategically using a mixture of IP rights to maximize the value of the IP portfolio of the quantum computer’s owner, potentially leads to IP protection in perpetuity. Overlapping IP protection regimes can result in unlimited duration of global exclusive exploitation rights for first movers, being a handful of universities and large corporations. The ensuing IP overprotection in the field of quantum computing leads to an unwanted concentration of market power. Overprotection of information causes market barriers and hinders both healthy competition and industry-specific innovation. In this particular case it slows down progress in an important application area of quantum technology, namely quantum computing.

Fair competition and antitrust laws for quantum technology

In general, our current IP framework is not written with quantum technology in mind. IP should be an exception -limited in time and scope- to the rule that information goods can be used for the common good without restraint. IP law cannot incentivize creation, prevent market failure, fix winner-takes-all effects, eliminate free riding and prohibit predatory market behavior at the same time. To encourage fair competition and correct market skewness, antitrust law is the instrument of choice.

Towards an innovation architecture that mixes freedom and control

The article proposes a solution tailored to the exponential pace of innovation in The Quantum Age, by introducing shorter IP protection durations of 3 to 10 years for Quantum and AI infused creations and inventions. These shorter terms could be made applicable to both the software and the hardware side of things. Clarity about the recommended limited durations of exclusive rights -in combination with compulsory licenses or fixed prized statutory licenses- encourages legal certainty, knowledge dissemination and follow on innovation within the quantum domain. In this light, policy makers should build an innovation architecture that mixes freedom (e.g. access, public domain) and control (e.g. incentive & reward mechanisms).

Creating a thriving global quantum ecosystem

The article concludes that anticipating spectacular advancements in quantum technology, the time is now ripe for governments, research institutions and the markets to prepare regulatory and IP strategies that strike the right balance between safeguarding our fundamental rights & freedoms, our democratic norms & standards, and pursued policy goals that include rapid technology transfer, the free flow of information and the creation of a thriving global quantum ecosystem, whilst encouraging healthy competition and incentivizing sustainable innovation.

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Intellectual Property, Innovation, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Quantum Technology, StanfordMauritz KopStanford Law SchoolQuantum Computing, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Technology, Deep Learning, Software, Hardware, Patents, Database Rights, Copyright, Trade Secrets, Trade Dress, Public Domain, Regulation, Antitrust Law, Democracy, Human Rights, Innovation Policy, Security, State Secrets, technology transfer, Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Stanford Law School, University of California Berkeley, Mauritz Kop
Mauritz Kop keynote speaker at Quantum Delta | ECP event: Quantum unravelled
Mauritz Kop keynote speaker at Quantum Delta | ECP event: Quantum unravelled

On April 22, 2021, ECP Platform for the Information Society and the Quantum Delta NL Living Lab Quantum and Society are hosting a webinar on quantum technology. You can sign up here: https://ecp.nl/agenda/ecp-deelnemersspecial-quantumtechnologie-ontrafeld-hoe-nu-verder/

ECP and Living Lab Quantum and Society are organizing the second webinar on quantum technology. Whereas last time it was about what exactly quantum technology is, on April 22 we glance into the future. For what concrete applications is quantum suitable? How is the technology interwoven with other technologies? And what about the ethical, legal and social aspects of quantum technology? This is what speakers from ECP, Living Lab Quantum and Society, IBM, TNO and Stanford Law School will discuss.

Mauritz Kop will discuss Ethical and Legal issues of Quantum Technology

Mauritz Kop is a Stanford Law School TTLF Fellow, Director of MusicaJuridica and strategic intellectual property lawyer at AIRecht, a leading 4th Industrial Revolution technology consulting firm based in Amsterdam. His work on the regulation of AI, machine learning training data and quantum technology has been published at both Stanford, Harvard and Yale. Mauritz is a member of the European AI Alliance (European Commission), the Copyright Association (VvA), CLAIRE, the Dutch AI Coalition (NL AIC) and ECP.

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Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Technology, Quantum ELSPIMauritz Kopquantum, AI, ethics, law