How to Protect your AI Innovations with a Patent: Updated EPO Guidelines

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are here to stay. Besting humans in complex games such as Go and Poker was just the beginning. Today, companies in fields as diverse as life and medical sciences, telecommunications, energy management, security, and manufacturing are seeing the benefits that artificial intelligence and machine learning can bring. This impact is reflected both in the number of scientific publications in the field (over 1.6 million and counting) and also in the number of patent filings (nearly 340'000 worldwide to date). The pace shows no signs of slowing down: patent filings in deep learning (an area of AI) experienced an average annual growth rate of 175% between 2013 and 2016.