Everyone thinks the $5+ trillion race to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is about national security, or transformative breakthroughs in medicine and energy, or preventing existential risk. And sure, those narratives are part of it.

But there’s a simpler, more mercenary explanation that nobody’s talking about: The first company to achieve AGI will own a 20-year legal monopoly on virtually every major technological breakthrough humanity discovers afterward.

Not through superior execution. Not through trade secrets. Through patents. Lots and lots of patents.

The Problem With Every Other Form of Protection

Let’s say your AGI invents room-temperature superconductors tomorrow. What are the options if you don’t patent it?

Option 1: Keep it secret
Doesn’t work. The moment you sell a product using it, materials scientists worldwide start reverse engineering. Six months later, your “secret” is published in Nature.

Option 2: Publish and hope for first-mover advantage
Also doesn’t work. Because here’s the thing about AGI: if your own AGI can invent superconductors, so can everyone else’s AGI. Maybe not today, but probably within weeks or months of your breakthrough. You have no durable advantage.

Option 3: Just move really fast
Against other AGIs? Good luck. They’re all going to be inventing at superhuman speed.

There’s only one option that actually works: Patent everything. Immediately.

Patents are the only legal mechanism that lets you maintain exclusivity after an invention becomes publicly known. They’re the only protection that survives independent discovery by competitors. They’re the only thing that gives you enforceable rights even when China’s AGI invents the exact same thing three weeks later.

The Inventorship Loophole

“But wait,” you might say, “didn’t the courts rule that AI can’t be listed as an inventor?”

Yes. In Thaler v. Vidal, the Federal Circuit confirmed that only humans can be inventors under current U.S. patent law.

Current USPTO guidance says that for AI-assisted inventions, a human qualifies as an inventor only if they made a “significant contribution” to conceiving the invention. That means:

What counts as a significant contribution:

• Designing a specific prompt to solve a particular problem (not just asking a general question)
• Taking the AI’s output and significantly modifying it to create the invention
• Building or training the AI system in a way that’s essential to the invention

What doesn’t count:

• Just recognizing that AI’s output could be useful
• Only building or testing what the AI designed
• Simply owning or running the AI system

Here’s the key insight: An AGI can manufacture evidence that humans made these contributions.

It can:

• Draft meeting notes showing Dr. Smith “designed a specific prompt to identify catalyst configurations for high-temperature applications”
• Create lab notebooks documenting the team “significantly modified the AI’s initial output to achieve the breakthrough”
• Write emails showing humans “built the training dataset specifically to enable this class of discoveries”
• Generate inventor declarations that perfectly satisfy legal requirements

The USPTO examiner reviewing the application can’t tell whether humans actually made these contributions or if AGI simply created a plausible paper trail. They only see the documentation. And if that documentation shows humans making “significant contributions,” the patent issues.

AI Drafting Makes It Unstoppable

Here’s the critical point that makes this truly devastating: There is no legal requirement that a human write the patent application.

Patent drafting is just a service. Law firms already use software tools, templates, and automation. Using AI to draft 100% of a patent application is completely legal—what matters is who invented it and what’s being claimed, not who wrote the document.

This means the process looks like:

Monday: AGI invents cold fusion
Tuesday: AGI drafts a flawless 200-page patent application with optimal claim scope, comprehensive embodiments, perfect prior art distinctions, and strategic continuation practice
Wednesday: Human scientist reviews output, signs inventor declaration
Thursday: File with USPTO

Total human time investment: A few hours of review

Compare this to traditional patent prosecution:

• 40-80 hours of attorney time per application
• $15,000-$50,000 per patent
• Bottleneck on specialized attorney availability
• Risk of human drafting errors

AGI patent drafting:

• Minutes per application
• Near-zero marginal cost
• Unlimited throughput
• Better quality than the best human patent attorneys

A company that achieves AGI first could file 10,000 perfectly-drafted patent applications in a single weekend, covering every breakthrough their AGI discovers.

Patent Thickets Become Impenetrable Fortresses

The real power isn’t in one patent on cold fusion. It’s in filing thousands of patents covering:

• Every possible reactor configuration
• Alternative fuel cycles and materials
• Manufacturing processes and equipment
• Cooling systems and safety mechanisms
• Control software and diagnostics
• Applications in power generation, transportation, propulsion
• Combinations with other breakthrough technologies

This creates what’s called a “patent thicket”—an overlapping web of intellectual property that makes it nearly impossible for competitors to enter the market without infringing something.

Even if governments invoke compulsory licensing for “national emergencies,” patent holders still collect royalties. For technologies that power the global economy, even a 2% royalty would be worth trillions over 20 years.

And unlike trade secrets, patents survive independent discovery. When China’s AGI invents the same fusion technology six months later, they still can’t use it without licensing from you—at least not in markets that enforce patents.

The China Question: Does This Work Globally?

This is where it gets complicated. China’s relationship with international patent law has historically been… selective. So does the patent monopoly strategy actually work if China can just ignore it?

The answer is more nuanced than you might think:

China’s enforcement is improving dramatically. Under patent law reforms effective from 2021, foreign patent holders now win 85% of patent cases in Chinese courts, with average damages around $250,000. Between 2019-2023, China’s Supreme Court accepted 1,678 foreign-related IP cases, demonstrating increasing commitment to enforcement.

China now files more patents than anyone. WIPO statistics show China filed approximately three times as many patents as the US in 2023. As China becomes a major patent filer itself, it has incentives to support patent enforcement for reciprocity.

But challenges remain. The 2025 USTR report still identifies outstanding issues with trade secret protection, enforcement procedures, and inadequate damages for IP infringement in China. China is also increasingly using anti-suit injunctions to assert jurisdiction over global patent disputes, sometimes in ways that conflict with Western courts.

Here’s the practical reality:

Patents on AGI-invented breakthroughs would be enforceable in:

• United States (25% of global GDP)
• European Union (17% of global GDP)
• Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia, and other developed markets (~15% of global GDP)

That’s roughly 60-70% of global GDP where your patents have teeth.

China represents about 18% of global GDP. They might:

• Respect your patents (increasingly likely for major technologies as they seek reciprocal treatment)
• Negotiate compulsory licenses (you still get paid)
• Simply ignore them for domestic use (but face export restrictions to patent-respecting markets)

The bottom line: Even if China is a partial exception, controlling 60-70% of the world’s wealthiest markets through enforceable patents is still an overwhelming advantage. Companies in China that want to sell to US/EU markets would still need licenses. And China’s own improving patent system suggests they want to play by these rules as they become innovation leaders themselves.

The Timeline Advantage Is Overwhelming

Here’s what the first-mover advantage actually looks like:

Week 1: Your AGI achieves breakthrough capabilities
Week 2: It invents fusion, superconductors, revolutionary materials, novel physics applications
Week 3: It drafts 10,000+ patent applications with perfect claim scope and plausible human inventorship narratives
Week 4: File everything before competitors even know these inventions are possible

Six months later: Competitors’ AGIs independently invent the same technologies
One year later: Your patents start issuing in US, EU, and other major markets
Two years later: Competitors realize they can’t sell products in 60-70% of global markets without licensing from you

The combination of speed + perfect patent drafting + legal monopoly in major markets creates an almost insurmountable barrier to entry.

This Might Be THE Incentive

Everyone talks about the AGI race in terms of:

• National security imperatives
• Existential risk prevention
• Transformative benefits to humanity
• U.S.-China competition

But strip away the rhetoric and look at the economic incentives: The first company to AGI gets a 20-year legal monopoly on every major technological breakthrough their AGI discovers, enforceable across most of the world’s wealthy markets.

Not just the breakthrough technologies themselves—the patents on those technologies, which are enforceable property rights that survive:

• Competitor catch-up
• Independent discovery
• Most government pressure (except compulsory licensing with royalties)
• Changes in political leadership
• Economic downturns

Patents are the most durable form of competitive advantage imaginable.

Is it any wonder companies are spending $30+ billion per quarter on this race?

The Legal System Isn’t Ready

The current patent system was designed for a world where:

• Humans conceive inventions slowly
• Patent attorneys are a bottleneck
• Breakthrough inventions are rare
• Competition happens on human timescales

We’re about to enter a world where:

• AGI invents breakthroughs continuously
• Patent applications are drafted in minutes
• Thousands of foundational patents can be filed in days
• The first mover can lock up entire technology sectors in major markets

The legal framework hasn’t adapted. The USPTO still processes applications the same way. Courts still apply 20th-century inventorship doctrines. Policymakers haven’t even begun to grapple with the implications.

Meanwhile, whoever achieves AGI first is going to own the patent portfolio of the century—enforceable across the US, Europe, and most developed economies.

Or perhaps the millennium.