Can patents be issued for technology or algorithms derived by artificial intelligence? That's a problem that lawyers and researchers are now grappling with. Law firm Baker McKenzie predicts that "patentability of AI-created inventions, liability for infringement by AI, and patent subject-matter eligibility of AI technologies are the top three areas of patent law that will be disrupted by AI." Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of AI and ML at the World Economic Forum Center, said that "we are about to witness a collision between artificial intelligence and various aspects of patent law. This technology is going to change the game for many sectors, and will impact numerous regulations and legal fields." Currently patents are awarded to individuals.

Patents are intangible assets, that is they are products of ideas and thinking, and fall under Intellectual Property (IP). Now, IP is subject to the region/country of the applicant and is regulated by the respective government of those countries and regions. For example, in the United States, ML related work are appreciated and the ease of filing patents is considerably less rigorous compared to the European Union, where the emphasis is more on the method or working model which incorporates the related field of work rather than the actual work itself. This again does not hold good all the time with the United States scrutinising software patents. When it comes to India, the patent filing process is again stringent and requires consent from the government authorities even though it promotes filing patents for startups.