AI and Patents in the WIPO

In a meeting a few weeks ago I asked the question about how findings using AI methods were being protected,  and got a somewhat unclear answer.    This perhaps shows why. Here much more about what is happening in this space.  Interesting stats about directions. - Franz

Based on the:WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Trends Report  (158 page PDF) 

AI and patents - trends to watch  from the WIPO technology trends report
WIPO Technology Trends report 2019  came as a surprise to me. We in AI are not used to thinking about patents so much because tools / platforms are mostly Open sourced.

Here are the key takeaways from this report:
AI and patents - trends to watch  from the WIPO technology trends report.Posted by Ajit Jaokar in the DSC

The ratio of scientific papers to inventions has decreased from 8:1 in 2010 to 3:1 in 2016 – indicative of a shift from theoretical research to the use of AI technologies in commercial products and services.
Among AI functional applications, computer vision, which includes image recognition, is the most popular. Computer vision is mentioned in 49 percent of all AI-related patents (167,038 patent documents), growing annually by an average of 24 percent (21,011 patent applications filed in 2016).  

functional applications with the highest growth rates in patent filings in the period 2013 to 2016 were AI for robotics and control methods, which both grew on average by 55 percent a year.  
Many AI patents include inventions that can be applied in different industries – telecommunications, transportation , medical sciences , personal devices, computing and human–computer interaction (HCI) featured highly in the related industries.  ...."   (Considerably more at the link)