When do AI-related inventions merit a patent?
- There are growing questions about what can and should be patented
As companies from IBM to Samsung Electronics Co. to Halliburton Co. scramble to find the next great invention using artificial intelligence, they may hit a roadblock when trying to patent their ideas.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is making it increasingly difficult to obtain legal protections for inventions related to AI, a field that encompasses autonomous cars, virtual assistants and financial analyses, among countless other uses. The agency, seeing an influx of AI applications, is grappling with how to comply with a law that PTO Director Andrei Iancu has called “anything but clear” concerning what can be patented.
“The U.S. right now is a strong leader in artificial intelligence,” said Kate Gaudry, a patent attorney with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Washington who analyzed data from LexisNexis PatentAdvisor on pending applications at the agency. She found that, of applications given a primary classification of AI-related, about 90 percent got initial rejection letters saying they were abstract ideas.
“People are going to catch on that they are unlikely to get a patent,” she said.
That’s particularly important in a growing industry like artificial intelligence. Venture capitalists and companies are pouring funds into AI in the hopes of riding a new wave of advances in the field to commercial success.