Lonsdale Suggests Forgoing Patents to Avoid China Taking IP

China is actively appropriating intellectual property developed by US-based artificial intelligence and life-science startups, 8VC founder Joe Lonsdale told Bloomberg TV Monday.

Lonsdale, a cofounder of Palantir Technologies Inc. and Peter Thiel protege, said the US patent office is “completely broken,” and actors in China are reviewing filings to extract knowledge for their own commercial purposes.

Lonsdale suggested founders might be better served not to file patents and avoid drawing attention to their findings. Other US tech leaders including former Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have criticized China for alleged IP theft for more than a decade.

Representatives for the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the US Patent and Trademark Office weren’t immediately available for comment.

Lonsdale’s venture capital firm manages $9 billion in assets and backs mostly US-based startups including AI coding company Cognition AI Inc., life sciences startup Altos Labs, and defense companies including Anduril Industries Inc. and Saronic Technologies Inc. Lonsdale led a major fundraising effort to elect President Donald Trump to his second term and said he counts the Undersecretary of War Emil Michael, the Deputy Secretary Stephen Feinberg and other administration officials among his friends.