Ideatrotter: Disruptive 2.0 Intelligence  Can Watson’s Mega-
Brain Help Rid the World of Patent Trolls?  IBM’s Watson is most
famous for handing Ken Jennings his ass on Jeopardy, but since
then the supercomputer’s talents have been used to help doctors
diagnose and treat disease. But Watson’s greatest trick might
still be ahead of it: beating back the scourge of patent trolls.
A key part of Watson’s medical mission is the scanning and
cataloging of millions of drug discoveries buried in medical
journals and patents. Through IBM’s Strategic IP Insight
Platform, Watson has cataloged some 2.5 million chemical
compounds. IBM has donated the database to NIH, which is a boon
to scientists all over the world because it includes troves of
otherwise hard to find information about expired patents.  But
as ExtremeTech suggests, there’s no reason the technology should
be limited to medical patents when it could be used to go
through all patents.  (via smarterplanet)