The world is at the beginning of a profound artificial intelligence (AI) driven technological revolution. The potential of AI appears nearly limitless. It has the capacity to create tremendous value across society, industry, science, and the global economy. At the same time, it has the potential to amplify existing problems and inflict great harm.
The patent ecosystem, including inventors, patent owners, patent attorneys, service providers, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and federal court, is embracing AI.
The question is not whether AI will transform the patent industry, but how. Will it benefit the patent process, harm it, or produce a combination of both?
The answer will depend on how AI is applied.
If AI tools fail to address the fundamental weaknesses of the patent process (i.e., inadequate patent strategy and inadequate patent counsel, not including the issues within the USPTO or the Courts), they will exacerbate them.
In general, inadequate patent strategy results in patent portfolios having too many patents in some technology areas, too few patents in other technology areas, patents that don’t fit in any relevant technology areas, and missed opportunities because too many good inventions don’t get disclosed or are not pursued. This wastes billions of dollars per year and costs patent holders tens of billions of dollars in lost value. For more information on this topic, see our Article entitled, “Patent process primary weakness #1: Inadequate patent strategy.”
In general, inadequate patent counsel is regarding the limited supply of experienced and accomplished patent attorneys (i.e., attorneys that have a long proven record of successful patent preparation and prosecution judgements, which produced billions of dollars of value for their clients). As the industry stands today, there are too many patent applications being written by inexperienced and/or unaccomplished patent attorneys, resulting in a high percentage of poor quality patent applications. This also wastes billions of dollars per year and costs patent holders tens of billions of dollars in lost value. For more information on this topic, see our Article entitled, “Patent process primary weakness #2: Inadequate patent counsel.”
Today, most commercially available AI patent tools focus on improving efficiency (which primarily is about reducing attorney time regardless of experience and/or accomplishments). They accelerate one or more stages of the patent process, such as invention capture, patent drafting, prosecution support, or portfolio management. While these advances can deliver isolated gains, they do not address the weaknesses of the patent process.
If AI patent tools continue to focus on optimizing isolated stages of the patent process without addressing the weaknesses, AI patent tools will provide little to no overall benefit to the patent process, and ultimately, may do more harm than good.
Fortunately, it is not too late for a different path.
*Please note that this article is not legal advice; it is not a legal opinion; nor should you rely on it as legal advice or as a legal opinion. This article merely expresses the author’s general thoughts on a topic regarding the business of patents. Nothing in this article establishes any form of an attorney client relationship between you, the reader, and the author of this article.
