Artificial intelligence (AI) is being applied to intellectual property with the potential to both help and hinder innovation. AI cannot currently be named as the inventor on most patents, but it can speed up both innovation itself and the process of drafting and filing applications. Generative AI, in particular, has had a significant impact on patenting since the launch of the ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022. But the use of older forms of AI in the field of patents has been prevalent for well over a decade. One such technology is Lex Machina, which uses machine learning to comb data sources and provide legal analytics – giving users valuable patent information.
One man leading the way in AI application in intellectual property is Intellectual Property lawyer, Damien Riehl. He and a computer programmer, Noah Rubin, developed a prototype program that created 3,000 melodies, which grew to 68 billion and, as of today, 417 billion, for a project named All the Music. Riehl and his collaborators quickly saw that this model could also be applied to patents. The team began work on a successor project called All the Patents, which takes all claims in previously filed patents and uses a machine to recombine them to create every conceivable combination on every conceivable claim in every prior patent. The resulting collection can then serve as prior art in the patent law concept that prevents inventions from being patented if they are already described, obvious or not new.
According to Riehl, this project will help to disincentivize businesses from patenting for purely strategic purposes when they have no intention of developing the invention but wish to prevent others from developing similar innovations or gain revenue. Their research ensures the likelihood of those recombined patents is very high, that is, they will get denied, and therefore, they are not worth the expense. Instead, they need to innovate on their products, not on their patents, says Riehl.
The use of AI in patenting is likely to replace more and more of the human labor involved in the process and, at the same time, require a re-think of not only how patents are produced and assessed but also the roles of patent attorneys and other specialists. According to Vasheharan Kanesarajah, head of strategic development for intellectual property at analytics company Clarivate, the traditional model of a patent attorney being a specialist in a single domain is being broken. In the short term, AI tools can help with prior art searches and summarizing patent applications in plain English.
In conclusion, AI will continue to play a pivotal role in the intellectual property field, automating repetitive work and freeing up attorneys to focus on research and innovation. Despite the opportunities this technology presents, there is still a need to balance its use to improve efficiency with the rights and needs of inventors in the patenting process.
