The two decades have seen the practice of illegal hacking fully transform from the pranks of teenagers and immature adults into industrialized networks centered around sabotage. The role of computers as the supreme driving tools of innovation has also fully been realized as computers and improved AI are now paramount in every major field. As a result of these transformations, faster and more powerful computers are needed to improve encryption, guide the future of computing, and continue to facilitate advancements. Enter: Quantum Computers
People have been talking about Quantum Computing for decades now. In fact, the concept of a quantum computer was first described by either Paul Benioff or Richard Feynman in the late 1970's, there's some debate regarding this, so the concept has been around for a long time. Additionally, the first quantum computer appears to have been built in 1998 by Michael Mosca and Jonathan A. Jones at Oxford University. Shortly afterwards, the company, D-Wave, was founded to build commercial quantum computers. While D-Wave has consistently sought patents for the machines it has invented, it has not filed patents for many specific applications of its quantum computers, if it has filed for any at all. Until three months ago, there were very few patents for quantum computer applications. One company has rapidly changed this and has caused a paradigm shift regarding patenting and quantum computing, Accenture. This consulting and staffing agency has become the most dominant force in quantum computing patents in a short period of time, and right now, we will focus on the nature of those patents, their potential benefits and problems to the patents, and future consequences. On April 30th of this past year, Accenture was awarded Patent #10,275,721 for "machine learning module that selects quantum or classical computing for optimal business outcomes"(See Accenture's Newsroom from July 1 here: https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/accenture-awarded-second-us-patent-for-quantum-computing.htm). Unlike almost every other patent related to quantum computing, this patent is strictly concerning a new way to use quantum computing, or depending on the situtation, to avoid using quantum computing. In the post-ALICE framework, this is an unusual feat. Accenture has managed to patent a a business method that, at least partially, uses quantum computing. Honestly, at first glance, I thought that this suggested that the USPTO would be deferential to business method patent applications when they are coupled with the use of cutting-edge technology. However, after carefully reading the patent, I can conclude that there is no special deferential standard for patents related to quantum computing, but something far more interesting has happened. Stay tuned to find out!
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