Practical Tips for Securing Patent Rights for AI-Generated Inventions

From Siri to self-driving cars to computer-assisted drug discovery, AI is progressing rapidly, and it has provided competitive intelligence for solving some of the world's greatest challenges. As AI systems advance, they have also started emerging as independent developers of better cars, drugs, personalized products and various research tools. Specifically, AI systems can evolve over time to autonomously contribute to the conception and development of an idea outside of their creator's expertise or original intent. For example, a drug designed and discovered solely by AI systems, without any human interaction, is about to enter clinical human trials for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. See, Rachel England, "AI-Formulated medicine to be tested on humans for the first time," Engadget (2020). Similarly, AI systems have independently developed new artificial computer languages that are more efficient in performing the assigned tasks (e.g., translation), eschewing human languages. See, Sam Wong, "Google Translate AI Invents its own language to translate with new scientist" (2016). The role of AI as a creator of new inventions again brings to attention the controversy surrounding ownership and inventorship rights relating to patents filed to protect such AI-generated inventions. It is particularly important to address these issues because key components of an AI system — datasets and ever-evolving AI algorithms — often do not qualify for patent protection, leaving only the output of the AI system as a potentially patent eligible invention.