A recent German Patent Court decision No. 19 W (pat) 7/22 from 1 June 2022 reflected the practice of the European Patent Office in assessing the inventive step of an invention employing machine learning or artificial intelligence. The German Court decided that the mere inclusion of a reference to a...
Artificial Intelligence Systems are not inventors in Europe
Shortly before Christmas, the European Patent Office’s Board of Appeal rejected an application to name an artificial intelligence system, Dabus, as an inventor on two patent applications EP 18 275 163 and EP 18 275 174. The full details of the decision have not emerged, but a brief press release gives some details of the case. The two...
Patenting an Artificial Intelligence Invention – guidance from the US Patent Office
In 2019, the US Patent and Trademark Office drafted detailed guidance for the patent software invention. The 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance included one example (no 39) which was directed towards a method for training a neural network for facial detection. The example was very simple - the...
Artificial Intelligence as an inventor – the German decision
Last Thursday (11 November) the German Federal Patent Court decided that an artificial intelligence system could not be listed as an inventor, but that a German Patent Application needed to name a person as the inventor, but could add that the conception of the invention was aided by an artificial...
Patenting Software Modules
One of the biggest challenges in writing patents for computer-implemented inventions (CII) or "software patents" is the level of disclosure that is required. A patent examiner can reject the patent application in Europe for lack of enabling disclosure (as we have previously reported here) or for "indefiniteness" in the United...
Webinar: Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence
This webinar aims at providing a general overview of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and intellectual property. During the training participants will have the chance to learn about: What do we understand by intellectual property in artificial intelligence? What rights are there in data used by machine learning in AI? How...
Database Management Systems – the European Approach
On March 1, 2021, the European Patent Office (EPO) updated its Guidelines and the new update includes a substantial new section on how to patent database management systems. Given the importance of data and database protection for, e.g., artificial intelligence, this update could be significant in the next few years....
Artificial Intelligence: Challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights Framework
The European Union published in November 2020 a report on the challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights framework by the development of artificial intelligence. The report focussed in particular on the fields of copyright and patent law as this is the area in which the challenges are increasingly found. The...
Patenting Artificial Intelligence – what do you need to disclose?
One of the challenges in filing a patent application is the level of detail of the invention in the description. Earlier this year, the European Patent Office’s Board of Appeal provided some helpful insights.