EU Artificial Intelligence Act and IP Rights

With the drafting of the "Artificial Intelligence Act" (April 2021), the European Commission has made its first attempt at comprehensively regulating the expansive world of AI. Whilst the draft legislation extensively addresses the regulation and classification of AI technology, it does not mention another area of concern regarding Artificial Intelligence, namely intellectual property rights. Identifying IP rights as a major issue, the EU Parliament adopted a resolution on IP rights for the development of AI technologies in October 2020. In it, the Parliament called upon the Commission to ensure a high level protection of intellectual property rights when regulating AI. Despite the report being forwarded to the Commission well before it finalized its proposal for the "Artificial Intelligence Act", the protection of intellectual property rights is not mentioned in the draft legislation. Merely an Annex published alongside it briefly mentions the challenges of protecting intellectual property rights in connection with AI-assisted outputs.