How the Courts Treat Artificial Intelligence (AI) Patent Inventions: Through the Years since Alice

In the last quarter of 2020, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reported that patent filings for Artificial Intelligence (AI) related inventions more than doubled from 2002 to 2018. See Office of the Chief Economist, Inventing AI: Tracking The Diffusion Of Artificial Intelligence With Patents, IP DATA HIGHLIGHTS No. 5 (Oct. 2020).

But what about the courts? How does such an increase in the number of patent filings translate to the number of related court decisions? And given that AI fundamentally relies on software, how do courts analyze AI-related inventions for patentability under the Supreme Court’s two-part patent eligibility test as described in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (“Alice”)?

This article briefly explores these questions in view of the (few) post-Alice cases that have considered AI-related patent inventions.

Read the full article at the link below.