IBM Watson AI Patent Assistant

Mentioned earlier, examining. 

IBM Watson Demos AI Patent Assistant

ERIC HAL SCHWARTZ on October 31, 2022 at 4:00 pm in Voicebot.ai

IBM and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are testing a new AI tool for exploring and analyzing intellectual property data. The IBM IP Advisor uses Watson’s conversational AI to help people look for patents, both submitted and granted, to help inventors avoid potential rejection for repetition and spot where their ideas would fit.

AI PATENT DIVE

Inventors need to know about patents that may overlap with their own ideas, information known as ‘prior art.’ The sheer volume of patents and applications makes assessing the prior art difficult without enormous resources or expertise in patent law. The IBM IP Advisor leverages Watson’s natural language processing to rapidly gather and analyze patent information based on questions posed by a user about patents, application statuses, and what kind of refinements they might need to make to their inventions to avoid repeating or infringing on someone else’s intellectual property. The service is available for public testing until the end of November on the USPTO’s Open Data Portal.

“Prior art research and analysis is the foundation of a successful product or service launch, but the growth of prior art coupled with the need for appropriate keywords and the right patent classifications can be a barrier to entry for the every-day inventor,” IBM’s general manager for the U.S. public and federal market Steve LaFleche said. “I’m proud of our work with the USPTO in support of their objective to not just deploy smarter technology, but to build a better, more accessible IP system.”  ... ' 

US Patent Office Says AI Cannot be an Inventor

Relates to some work underway.

US patent office rules that artificial intelligence cannot be a legal inventor

Only ‘natural persons’ need apply     By Jon Porter@JonPorty in TheVerge

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has ruled that artificial intelligence systems cannot be credited as an inventor in a patent, the agency announced earlier this week. The decision came in response to two patents — one for a food container and the other for a flashing light — that were created by an AI system called DABUS.

Among the USPTO’s arguments is the fact that US patent law repeatedly refers to inventors using humanlike terms such as “whoever” and pronouns like “himself” and “herself.” The group behind the applications had argued that the law’s references to an inventor as an “individual” could be applied to a machine, but the USPTO said this interpretation was too broad. “Under current law, only natural persons may be named as an inventor in a patent application,” the agency concluded. .... " 

Artificial Inventor Project: http://artificialinventor.com/patent-applications/
DABUS/Creativity Machine: http://imagination-engines.com/iei_dabus.php