One of the things that is on our clients' minds when
filing patents is whether the invention is detectable – after
all, a patent is of limited use if you can't detect
infringement.
There seems to be a general assumption in the industry that
Machine Learning (ML) models can't be reverse engineered due
to their black box nature, and that there is limited value in
pursuing patents for “hidden AI”.
To get to the bottom of the detectability question, we sat down
with Chris Whittleston, Delivery Lead at Faculty, one
of the UK's well known AI companies, for an informal chat
about reverse engineering. We asked him what might be detectable in
different scenarios; this is a summary of what we learnt.
