Protecting Neurocognitive Trade Secrets: Safeguarding Thoughts in the BCI Era

The Next Leap: When AI Reads Our Minds

In 2025, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, described a future where humans will be able to think their questions and receive AI-generated answers—without typing, touching, or even speaking.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) like Neuralink’s Telepathy or Meta’s neuro-interaction prototypes are already turning this vision into reality, enabling direct communication between the human brain and artificial intelligence.

This convergence of cognition and computation promises extraordinary progress—yet it also introduces a question that strikes at the heart of intellectual property law:

Who owns a thought when it becomes data?

Our neural patterns, once private and transient, are now measurable, decodable, and increasingly valuable. We are entering the age of what I have been calling Neurocognitive Trade Secrets — commercially significant ideas that exist solely in the brain, before any verbal or written expression.

The Technological Frontier: From Thoughts to Data

BCIs are no longer speculative research projects—they are operational technologies.

– Neuralink’s Telepathy allows users with paralysis to control devices by thought alone.
– Meta’s neuro-wearables interpret silent speech and emotional intent.
– EPFL’s “Thought-to-Text” systems convert neural activity into words without speech or typing.
– DARPA’s MOANA program achieved wireless brain-to-brain communication of intent over 800 meters.

These technologies record neural activity in real time, translating it into structured data. Two technical mechanisms make this particularly relevant to IP law:

1. BCI Timestamps: Neural events—distinct thought patterns or commands—can be automatically time-stamped, creating a verifiable neural audit trail that proves when and by whom an idea originated.

2. AI-Based Cognitive Mapping: Machine-learning models can link brain activity to specific cognitive constructs such as intentions, designs, or even inner speech—with word-error rates below 2% for large vocabularies.

The result is that neural creativity can now be recorded and verified—even before it is shared.

The Legal Gap: When Traditional IP Falls Short

Current frameworks like the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), the EU Trade Secrets Directive (2016/943), and the TRIPS Agreement protect confidential information of commercial value.

But all assume the information has been expressed—in writing, speech, or code.

Pure thoughts, however sophisticated or valuable, remain outside the scope of protection.

This gap exposes individuals and organizations alike.

Imagine thought-linked collaboration tools in R&D, executive meetings, or creative industries. If neural data is intercepted, decoded, or replicated—who bears liability? How is consent defined? Can a mental concept be “stolen”?

Encouraging precedents exist: Chile has constitutionally recognized neurorights, and Colorado classifies neural data as sensitive personal information. But globally, law is trailing far behind technology.

Toward a Framework for Neuro-IP Protection

To preserve both innovation and cognitive liberty, legal systems must evolve to recognize neural data as a new form of intangible asset.

A proposed Neuro-IP framework could include:

1. Legal Recognition of Neural Data as Intellectual Property
Extend existing trade-secret and IP regimes to protect verified cognitive constructs with demonstrable economic value, validated through timestamped neural recordings.

2. Integration of Neurorights into IP Law
Embed mental privacy, identity, and autonomy within IP protections. Unauthorized neural data capture should be treated as a form of industrial espionage or cybercrime.

3. Techno-Legal Safeguards
Require “neurofirewalls”: encryption, explicit consent protocols, and data-integrity systems in all AI-BCI interfaces. Courts could rely on forensic neuro-evidence to prove misappropriation, similar to digital forensics today.

4. Specialized Governance
Create Neuro-IP divisions within patent offices and arbitration centers. Under WIPO coordination, these bodies could handle neuro-data disputes confidentially and consistently across jurisdictions.

This is not only a defensive measure—it’s a proactive blueprint for ethical technological sovereignty, ensuring that innovation enhances, rather than exploits, the human mind.

Legislative Tipping Points to Watch

– Colorado Neural Privacy Act (2026) – classifies neural information as sensitive personal data.
– Chilean Constitutional Amendment (Art. 19 No. 26-bis) – recognizes mental integrity and cognitive liberty as fundamental rights.
– EU AI Act (draft 2025) – introduces neuro-data impact assessments for high-risk AI systems.
– WIPO Standing Committee on IP & Frontier Technologies (Geneva, Dec 2025) – set to debate a “Sui Generis Right in Neural Patterns.”

These developments mark the dawn of a new legal category: Neuro-Intellectual Property™.

The Strategic Imperative

If tomorrow’s executives, scientists, or creatives use thought-based interfaces to collaborate with AI, the mind becomes both author and data source.

Protecting that mental data will be as critical as protecting trade secrets or algorithms today.

Forward-thinking companies must therefore integrate Neuro-IP governance, neural-data compliance, and BCI security protocols into their innovation strategies—before regulation makes them mandatory.

The greatest inventions of the coming decade will not be typed or spoken.

They will be thought in silence, translated by AI, and stored as neural data.

If law is to remain the guardian of innovation, it must evolve to protect the most private frontier of all: the human mind.

Dr. Liliana Bakayoko
International Business Lawyer | AI & Neurotech Governance Expert