Artificial Intelligence and Patent

The regulatory mechanism of patent law regarding artificial intelligence creates a deep impact on innovation, which will affect the economy and society. Artificial intelligence technology is progressing expeditiously, essential to the relevant stakeholders such as patent professionals and researchers. However, sufficient steps have to be conducted to reduce negative implications on society.

What is the relationship of artificial intelligence with patent law?

Artificial Intelligence in the realm of Intellectual Property has established any interesting inquiring and debate. The validity of patent of invention relevant to artificial intelligence established problems of the invention, and the scarcity of sufficient regulations and rules have left some open-ended questions. Artificial intelligence-associated inventions usually use neural networks, machine learning, and deep learning methods. 

To recognize the probability of patent registration of inventions to artificial intelligence, one needs to understand that invention related to artificial intelligence is a compound of several. It could be a calculative or an algorithm or incorporation of both. It is doubtful to reasonably apprehend these combinations in a claim to reduce the scope of protection. 

What are the legal implications of the patent on artificial intelligence?

The structure of the patent system is to stimulate research and increase investment by allocating innovators with a reasonable assurance of a return on the resulting inventions. 
The regulatory legislation in India is the Patents Act 1970, which supervises and equips the courts and Indian Patent Office to determine whether a critical product or process is suitable for a patent or not. The patentable criteria for inventions include three-level tests  - 
i. absolute novelty, 
ii. inventive step, and 
iii. industrial application. 

The patent registration of software inventions in India laws the provisions mentioned under sec. 3(k) of the Patents Act, 1970, and also regulates the conduct of the Examination of Computer Related Inventions (CRIs) published by the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks. 

What are the loopholes one may experience when patenting artificial intelligence?

There is a huge gap between theoretical legislation and practical implementation, as artificial intelligence brings too many challenges. For instance, IBM has the most extensive collection of patent applications relevant to artificial intelligence with 8,290 patent applications, the highest number in the world, followed by 5,930 patent applications owned by Microsoft. This increases the popularity of artificial intelligence-based inventions. The abrupt volume of patent applications for artificial intelligence that gets filed every year creates the need to formulate more practical intellectual property laws and create new moulds to fit the advanced technology.

Unless the laws are moulded in co-operation with the technical advancement, it will negatively influence upcoming human innovation. The invention created by a natural person substituting with independent algorithms may make the atrophy of human intelligence. 

This will lead to the dismissal of high-tech investigation and improvement in the jobs and industries creating them. An adequate mechanism is needed to ensure that patent applicants are not being dishonest about the involvement of artificial intelligence in the inventive process.


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