Routine duplication of post-2000 patented inventions by means of genetic programming

Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated that genetic programming can automatically create analog electrical circuits, controllers, and other devices that duplicate the functionality and, in some cases, partially or completely duplicate the exact structure of inventions that were patented between 1917 and 1962. This paper reports on a project in which we browsed patents of analog circuits issued after January 1, 2000 on the premise that recently issued patents represent current research that is considered to be of practical and scientific importance. The paper describes how we used genetic programming to automatically create circuits that duplicate the functionality or structure of five post-2000 patented inventions. This work employed four new techniques (motivated by the theory of genetic algorithms and genetic programming) that we believe increased the efficiency of the runs. When an automated method duplicates a previously patented human-designed invention, it can be argued that the automated method satisfies a Patent-Office-based variation of the Turing test.