AI Patent Policy

On August 26, 2019, Laura Peter, the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO, posted an update on the USPTO’s efforts to promote and protect AI-technology innovations and entrepreneurship (Read the update). In an effort to address whether additional guidance is necessary, the USPTO today also published a Notice in the Federal Register (Read the notice) requesting information from the public on AI patent-related issues, including feedback on questions pertaining to the intersection of AI and patent law. Representative questions include:

• Do current patent laws and regulations regarding inventorship need to be revised to take into account inventions where an entity or entities other than a natural person contributed to the conception of an AI invention or any other invention?
• Are there any patent eligibility considerations unique to AI inventions?
• Does AI impact the level of a person of ordinary skill in the art?
• Do the disclosure rules (enablement, specification, etc.) need to be altered for AI-related patent applications?

The USPTO is accepting written comments from the public through October 11, 2019.