With more than 4.5 million patent documents, HUPD is two to three times larger than comparable corpora.

The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit "bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior," according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a public records request. Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer of the USPTO, wrote that the office is "committed to pursuing innovation within our agency" but are still "working to bring these capabilities to the office in a responsible way." Paul Fucito, press secretary for the USPTO, clarified to WIRED that employees can use "state-of-the-art generative AI models" at work--but only inside the agency's internal testing environment. "Innovators from across the USPTO are now using the AI Lab to better understand generative AI's capabilities and limitations and to prototype AI-powered solutions to critical business needs," Fucito wrote in an email. Outside of the testing environment, USPTO staff are barred from relying on AI programs like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude for work tasks.

"Prevailing Narrative" podcast host Matthew Bilinsky discusses the federal law enforcement request for Google to hand over YouTube data on certain users on "Fox News @ Night." Ford Motor Company recently filed a patent application that's raising eyebrows and sparking debate about privacy and surveillance on our roads. The patent, "Systems and Methods for Detecting Speeding Violations," describes a system that could turn Ford vehicles into mobile speed detectors capable of reporting other drivers to the police. The patent application was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in January 2023. However, it was formally published by the USPTO on July 18, 2024.

If you thought folding phones and four-legged robots were futuristic, just wait to see what tech giants have in store for the near future. A patent is a government license that gives the holder exclusive rights to a new invention for a designated period of time. They don't always make it to the production line, but they can indicate what companies are working on. A 2017 Apple patent showed off a hybrid device that resembled a Mac laptop into which users can'dock' an iPhone. The patent describes, 'An electronic accessory device, comprising: an operational component that provides an output to a user; a housing carrying the operational component, the housing having a recess.'

'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."

Patent prosecutors should consider drafting claims to avoid the situation where the AI is the only entity providing an inventive contribution. Artificial intelligence (AI) is making an impact in our everyday life. AI helps us cut grass and vacuum living rooms. It helps us identify images for applications from waste sorting to medical diagnosis. AI also is making an impact in research and development.

At the US Patent & Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, artificial intelligence (AI) projects are expediting the patent classification process, helping detect fraud, and expanding examiners' searches for similar patents, enabling them to search through more documents in the same amount of time. And every project started with a pilot project. "Proofs of concept (PoCs) are a key approach we use to learn about new technologies, test business value assumptions, de-risk scale project delivery, and inform full production implementation decisions," says USPTO CIO Jamie Holcombe. Once the pilot proves out, he says, the next step is to determine if it can scale. Indian e-commerce vendor Flipkart has followed a similar process before deploying projects that allow for text and visual search through millions of items for customers who speak 11 different languages.

Can an artificial intelligence (AI) system be an inventor? Stephen Thaler recently submitted two patent applications for which an artificial intelligence system named "DABUS" was listed as the sole inventor. Specifically, the first application was directed to a food or beverage container that facilitates stacking.1 The second application was directed to a light device including a neural flame that serves as a signal beacon for human detection.2 The USPTO denied the patent applications for failing to list any human as an inventor.

Comment Future AI could be a challenge for US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) officials, who need to wrap their heads around complex technology that's perhaps not quite compatible with today's laws. Under the Department of Commerce, the USPTO's core mission is to protect intellectual property, or IP. Creators file patent applications in hope of keeping competitors from copying their inventions without permission, and patents are supposed to allow businesses to thrive with their own novel designs while not stifling wider innovation. Fast evolving technologies, such as deep learning, are pushing the limits of today's IP policies and rules. Clerks are trying to apply traditional patent approval rules to non-trivial machine-learning inventions, and bad decisions could result in a stranglehold on competition among public and private AI creators.