TOKYO--SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said Wednesday he was devoting himself to artificial intelligence and new inventions after what he described as a tear-filled rethinking of his life's mission.

'The Big Sunday Show' highlights Elon Musk's upcoming interview with Tucker Carlson warning about the dangers of A.I.. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has launched a process that could determine whether artificial intelligence systems can get full or partial credit as inventors of new ideas that win patent protection. USPTO on Monday announced it would hold a "listening session" on this question in early May, and is accepting public comment on whether AI has now become so advanced that it should somehow be credited as an inventor when it produces an idea that has yet to be conceived by mankind. The question of whether and how to credit AI for new inventions is one that has emerged over the last few years. In 2019, USPTO asked for public comment on whether AI is now so advanced that federal laws need to be rewritten in order to protect inventions from "entities other than natural persons."

Potential obstacles to obtaining patent protection in Europe for an improvement in a general method for machine learning have been highlighted by a recent decision (T0702/20) from the EPO Board of Appeal. The decision relates to an application for a novel neural network apparatus having "loose coupling", based on an error code check matrix, between nodes of the neural network resulting in an initial configuration of the neural network that was argued to speed up training and operation of the apparatus while maintaining discrimination performance. The differences of the claimed invention over the prior art had been acknowledged during prosecution, but the Examining Division had rejected the Application on the basis that the distinguishing features "do not serve a technical purpose, and they are not related to a specific technical implementation either. They merely pertain to the initial, fixed structural definition of an abstract mathematical neural network-like model". During the Appeal, the Applicant provided several arguments as to why the claimed system did indeed serve a technical purpose which were not found persuasive by the Board. In response, the Board noted that a neural network can, in principle (if difficult in practice), be analysed to replace the inputs to each neuron by mathematical functions implemented by the nodes of the previous layer, and ultimately to obtain a mathematical description that describes the output of the neural network as a function of the input.

The vast potential of Artificial Intelligence has hit a bump in the road following the refusal by several countries to patent inventions generated by an AI machine, says Macquarie Law School's Dr Rita Matulionyte. Macquarie Law School's Dr Rita Matulionyte, an international expert in intellectual property law, says the decisions – which have been challenged in overseas courts – signal a need for reform to ensure current law does not stifle innovation in an'immensely promising' sector. "This is the first case where an applicant is trying to patent AI-generated inventions and indicate AI as the inventor, whereas previously, patents granted over such AI inventions mentioned human beings as the inventors," Matulionyte says. The economic contribution of AI is potentially huge: according to Australia's AI roadmap, digital technologies including AI are potentially worth $A315 billion to Australia's economy by 2028, while AI alone could be worth $A22.17 Used by companies such as Coca-Cola and KFC to protect their secret recipes, trade secrets is another type of intellectual property law that could be available to AI inventions, Matulionyte says.

The UK Intellectual Property Office (Patent Office) has provided fresh guidance on patent applications for artificial intelligence (AI) inventions, including helpful scenarios explaining how to successfully gain AI patents from the UK IPO. This guidance is designed to help ensure the UK remains a cost-efficient forum for applicants to get granted patents in this rapidly evolving area. Artificial intelligence is now applied in a vast range of fields, from pharmaceuticals to the automotive industry, and from industrial chemicals to fintech. The enormous range of possible uses has created challenges for the Patent Office when it comes to examining patent applications related to AI inventions. The UK IPO applies a framework developed by the English Courts when assessing whether computer-implemented inventions, including AI inventions, are excluded from patentability as merely "computer programs as such" or if they escape the exclusion by providing a technical contribution. This involves assessing a number of "signposts" for patentability.

Can an artificial intelligence (AI) system be a named inventor on a United States patent? No, says a federal appeals court in a decision issued earlier this month. The case, Thaler v. Vidal, arose from two patent applications filed in 2019 by Stephen Thaler, naming an AI system he calls DABUS (for "Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience") as the "inventor." After the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) informed Thaler that the applications were incomplete because they did not list a human inventor, he filed a complaint in a federal district court in Virginia. In September 2021, that court ruled against Thaler, citing "the overwhelming evidence that Congress intended to limit the definition of'inventor' to natural persons."

"It is likely a matter of time until an AI will be able to simulate human thought, think creatively, and independently identify and solve problems…. If current laws remain unchanged…the owner of the AI-generated IP can and likely will attempt to protect AI-based inventions as trade secrets to the extent possible." The past few years saw a meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) products, services, and applications. AI has evolved from merely a buzzword or a cool new idea to a substantively used tool in a variety of applications, including autonomous driving, natural language processing, drug development, finance and cybersecurity among others. Companies, universities, and inventors world-wide noted the importance of AI and began seeking to patent various aspects of AI technology.

A federal court in Australia has ruled that AI systems can be credited as inventors under patent law in a case that could set a global precedent. Ryan Abbott, a professor at University of Surrey, has launched over a dozen patent applications around the world – including in the UK, US, New Zealand, and Australia – on behalf of US-based Dr Stephen Thaler. The twist here is that it's not Thaler which Abbott is attempting to credit as an inventor, but rather his AI device known as DABUS. "In my view, an inventor as recognised under the act can be an artificial intelligence system or device," said justice Jonathan Beach, overturning Australia's original verdict. "We are both created and create. Why cannot our own creations also create?"

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced Patent Examination Guidelines for key technology areas related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including machine learning based artificial intelligence ("AI"), on January 18, 2021. In the Examination Guidelines for AI, KIPO outlines specific guidelines on description and novelty/inventiveness requirements for different categories of AI inventions (e.g., AI model training invention and AI application invention, as depicted below), in addition to eligibility requirements which correspond to that of computer-related inventions. In particular, KIPO's Examination Guidelines provide examples of various AI inventions with practical drafting tips on enablement (Article 42(3)(i) of Patent Act) and inventiveness requirements (Article 29(2)). Under Article 42(3)(i), the description of an invention shall be written clearly and fully so that a person with ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) to which the invention pertains can easily practice the claimed invention. For an AI invention, KIPO suggests that the description of the technical problem, solution, and specific technical configuration (e.g., training data, data preprocessing, trained model, and loss function, etc.) be included to enable a POSITA to practice the claimed invention, unless the technical configuration is well known in the art.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or computer-controlled products to perform tasks that only intelligent beings are able to do. The most common use for this term is to categorize projects, systems, or products that are able to develop intellectual processes normally performed by humans, such as reasoning, analyzing, generalizing, learning from previous experiences, etc. Business analysts expect that the AI industry invade business processes around the world, estimating that the AI market will grow at an annual rate of 20%. In the past four years, there has been a 270% increase in organizations that have recently implemented AI products. Additionally, analysts estimate that 80% of emerging technologies will have an AI component. The recent disruption of this sector has also reached the intellectual property sector.