The real role of AI in patent law debates

Abstract

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to automate intellectual tasks through systematization, which renders it one of today’s most important technologies. Nevertheless, the capabilities of AI have been frequently overestimated. In the field of intellectual property, for instance, it has been debated how to protect ‘AI-generated inventions’, even though AI cannot invent without human intervention. In the meanwhile, other discussions which have a more direct impact on markets have been set aside. We take a look at two of those discussions in the patent field: (i) how AI can be used as a tool to help patent offices and applicants in evaluating the patentability of their inventions by analysing massive amounts of documents in a shorter timeframe and (ii) the employment of AI to perform essentiality checks, ie, to identify patents that are essential to a standard.