Technology keeps creating challenges for intellectual property law. The infamous case of the "monkey selfie" challenged the notion of not just who owns a piece of intellectual property, but what constitutes a "who" in the first place. Last decade's semi-sentient monkey is giving way to a new "who": artificial intelligence. The rapid rise of AI has forced the legal field to ask difficult questions about whether an AI can hold a patent at all, how existing IP and patent laws can address the unique challenges that AI presents, and what challenges remain. The answers to these questions are not trivial; stakeholders have poured billions upon billions of dollars into researching and developing AI technologies and AI-powered products and services across academia, government, and industry.

Computers using artificial intelligence are discovering medicines, designing better golf clubs and creating video games. Patent offices around the world are grappling with the question of who -- if anyone -- owns innovations developed using AI. The answer may upend what's eligible for protection and who profits as AI transforms entire industries. "There are machines right now that are doing far more on their own than to help an engineer or a scientist or an inventor do their jobs," said Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "We will get to a point where a court or legislature will say the human being is so disengaged, so many levels removed, that the actual human did not contribute to the inventive concept."

Computers using artificial intelligence are discovering medicines, designing better golf clubs and creating video games. Patent offices around the world are grappling with the question of who -- if anyone -- owns innovations developed using AI. The answer may upend what's eligible for protection and who profits as AI transforms entire industries. "There are machines right now that are doing far more on their own than to help an engineer or a scientist or an inventor do their jobs," said Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "We will get to a point where a court or legislature will say the human being is so disengaged, so many levels removed, that the actual human did not contribute to the inventive concept."

WASHINGTON/SEATTLE – Computers using artificial intelligence are discovering medicines, designing better golf clubs and creating video games. Patent offices around the world are grappling with the question of who -- if anyone -- owns innovations developed using AI. The answer may upend what's eligible for protection and who profits as AI transforms entire industries. "There are machines right now that are doing far more on their own than to help an engineer or a scientist or an inventor do their jobs," said Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "We will get to a point where a court or legislature will say the human being is so disengaged, so many levels removed, that the actual human did not contribute to the inventive concept."

"The time is ripe," said Andrei Iancu, the agency's director. "Our need is high and technology has advanced, so this is a good time to take advantage of these new tools to help our examiners," Mr. Iancu said. The agency's AI expert will advise the CIO on state-of-the-art implementations of smart tools in its internal business units, while creating a road map for using AI, including machine learning, to drive efficiencies in both the patent and trademark examination process, Mr. Iancu said. The goal is to speed up the overall process, he said, in part by automating aspects of the research performed by staff examiners and supervisors, reducing mundane administrative tasks and cutting costs by eking out efficiencies. The agency received about 643,000 patent applications last year, inching down from 2017, but up from about 619,000 in 2014, according to the agency.

Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), says that the courts have strayed on the issue of patent eligibility, including signaling he thought algorithms using artificial intelligence were patentable as a general proposition. That came in a USPTO oversight hearing Wednesday (April 18) before a generally supportive Senate Judiciary Committee panel. Both Iancu and the legislators were in agreement that more clarity was needed in the area of computer-related patents, and that PTO needed to provide more precedential opinions when issuing patents so it was not trying to reinvent the wheel each time and to better guide courts. At issue are Supreme Court decisions that Iancu said had injected "a degree of uncertainty" into that area of law. He said PTO would come up with guidelines to help better define what is patent-eligible, but that it was a challenge that needed to be addressed by Congress and stakeholders as well.