Patent Protection In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence

Legal Article by - ANIRUDDH SHARMA (This Article was written by him during his Internship at Legal Soch Foundation)

Abstract

Have you ever wondered how everything you saw growing up is not as same it used to be back then? Be it car, watch, television even a door! Nothing is simple & old school anymore. The prominent change in our day to day life is now Artificial intelligence. Millennials never even thought in their lifetime that a technology like this will become part of their lives without them noticing. The car you drive has a A.I in it, the phone you use has a A.I in it, even the toys of kids have inbuilt A.I. we really are in a golden Era of Artificial intelligence.

Everyday a new A.I equipped tool is introduced in market and in almost all sectors no matter engineering, medical, education, law, etc. New inventions are taking place everyday where inventors are putting their all efforts to walk with the technology. In this era of inventions it’s really crucial to safeguard the rights of inventors for their new A.I inventions. That’s where patenting comes in picture.

Introduction

Patent basically means to give a official right to a person to make, sell or use its invention as he likes and no one else can use his invention without his permission. Let us dive further in this topic and learn how this works. Patent gives a right to the owner of the invention to use its invention how he wants it, it’s up to him whether he would like to sell is design or not. Patent stops others from commercially exploiting the patented invention. Like if someone steals or copy the design, working of product, coding, parts then the owner has right to take action against that person. So patent turns out to be a crucial step saving your invention from any misuse.

Patent Eligibility

An invention must meet certain criteria to get eligible for a patent. These criteria are important because it insures the originality of the invention so that it can be introduced to the world. The criteria includes-

• Novelty- The invention must be original which means it shouldn’t be disclosed to the public in any form written, published or oral. There shouldn’t be any invention already exists with the same properties your invention currently have. These should be looked after before the date of patent application.

• Utility- The invention must have a utility which means it can be used as per it claims. It should have a practical use and must bring a benefit for the user. The invention must be operational for the field it has been invented.

• Uniqueness- The invention must be non- obvious for a ordinary person, it should have some uniqueness and a different utility which no one can interpret. The product should be a basic improvement of a already existing product. It should deal with different problems which exist but no one notices it, but that invention must solve that problem.

• Complete disclosure – The invention must disclose every detail of its parts, mechanism, art style, utility, blueprint and design. So in order to keep that information correct it should be supervised under experts or the inventors.

• Claims- The application of the patent must includes some claims that can define the scope of the invention’s protection. This claims must support the description provided in the application.

After meeting all these criteria, the invention is considered for patent. Which will secure the rights of the inventor for a specific period of time.

Challenges in patenting AI inventions

Unlike other technologies A.I is a rapid changing technology which is getting innovative every other day. The problem arises in AI innovations is that the most of the AI follows same algorithm which is a Self-learning computer that gather information and makes it better every time. AI inventions are increasing at a fast pace but it’s core element is obvious to a ordinary person. All A.I are just a upgrade from a past A.I.

For example we have ChatGPT which is a product of openai. That AI software can answer anything, can generate anything in text. It can write stories, books and anything just by some commands. Use of ChatGPT was rapidly growing in academic field, in writing and every major industries. The overuse of it concerned the recruiters and professors because the students started doing their assignments from AI and so did employees, which on ground level won’t going to help them. So to prevent that from happening, new AI tools entered the market which are AI sectors. They basically detects a AI written text. It helped people to filter the unworthy candidates who uses AI to cheat.

The other problem is AI is a machine learning system, so it can generate new innovations and it will be hard to know whether the idea of innovation was of the inventor or the A.I itself. AI even becomes challenge in other form of patents. The perfect case would be A.I generated Art, drawing and images. Sometimes its impossible to detect what is human made and what is A.I generated.

Real world examples of AI technologies which faced patenting difficulties.

• Autonomous Vehicles

The AI tech used in vehicles specially developed by companies like Tesla and Waymo. Even they have encountered patenting issues while implementing AI in their vehicles. The use of AI for navigation and perception , the camera and sensors was the elements which complicated the patenting process. The main challenges included the description of components, and uniqueness from existing vehicle’s technology. The challenge followed with the self-driving feature of the vehicle. Which could be a potential safety issue.

• AI generated Art, Music and literature.

Artificial intelligence is now capable of generating Artworks, music, animation and other media. The challenge is to distinguish between what is AI generated and what is created by a human because there’s always a thin line when it comes to recognising media. Every music which ai creates are inspired by humans, every art ai creates can we remake by a human. Because AI has learnt everything from humans. So while patenting such media pieces it needs so much precision to differentiate.

Legal framework

The new legal framework aims to co-operate with the new AI advancements and looks forward to foster new ways and procedures for recognising AI-generated innovations and bringing international cooperation efforts. The United States patent and trademark office (USPTO) issued new guidelines in 2019 regarding the examination of AI based patent applications. These guidelines suggest the new criteria for eligibility of patent especially for machine learning algorithms. They indicate that abstract ideas are not patentable. Only the applications of AI which brings technical improvement are eligible to be patent.

In 2020, The European patent office (EPO) updated it’s guidelines. These guidelines cleared that AI and Machine learning models can be patented if they actually bring a technical improvement and solve the problems related to that field. The technical nature of the invention must be clearly demonstrated while patent application says EPO. Legal framework is starting to address the ethical implications of AI innovations. This encompass consideration of accountability and transparency in AI systems. Some jurisdictions encouraged the involvement of guidelines within their patent laws to ensure development in AI based inventions.

Conclusion

So we studied the involvement of AI in new age inventions and how a inventor can protect its AI invention with the help of new lenient intellectual property laws which are promoting the patenting of AI based innovations if they bring something new to the table for us and the society. The rise of AI can open new doors of opportunities if we allow the inventors to work on them.

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