Patent Licensing and Transactions

The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently published new guidance explaining the requirements for patent examiners to reject patent claims for obviousness in view of what was already known in the prior art.

As technology continues to permeate the legal industry, the significance of IP in safeguarding innovations, ensuring fair competition, and fostering a culture of creative legal solutions becomes paramount.

The possibilities for patenting innovative applications of multimodal models across industries are endless.

Just like any new technology, efforts to protect and enforce intellectual property on AI-based technologies are likely to be hampered by a lack of both a unified governing framework and a common understanding of the technology.

Each decision involves reversal of a prior art rejection and contrasts with the other decisions on subject matter eligibility, revealing different PTAB approaches and results that can inform prosecution and appeal strategies.

The future of antibody claiming in the United States is uncertain following the U.S. Supreme Court's May 2023 ruling in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, a highly anticipated decision concerning enablement and whether the traditional way to claim antibodies — claiming antibodies by their function — will survive as a valid claiming strategy.

Part Two of a Two-Part article While the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of AI patents, such patents face difficulty in overcoming the patent-eligibility challenges under §101 and Alice. Section 101, however, is not the only hurdles AI patents must overcome. Section 112, with its written description, enablement, and definiteness requirements, presents additional obstacles.

Part One of a Two-Part Article Under the current Alice framework, those attempting to patent AI innovations face an uphill battle. But, as the caselaw demonstrates, inventors and patent drafters can take steps to reduce the risk of AI patent claims being invalidated as abstract ideas.