Using Artificial Intelligence To Route Patent Applications Through A Patent Examination Pipeline

In October 2020, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a report titled “Public Views on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Policy.”1 The report signifies the USPTO’s commitment to keeping pace with the rapidly improving Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and to deploying AI to accelerate a wide range of the USPTO’s tools2. Indeed, the report of 2020 echoes the USPTO’s commitment to adopting long-term, comprehensive strategies for promoting and providing leadership for many AI-based tools3, previously outlined in “Remarks by Director Iancu at the Artificial Intelligence: Intellectual Property Considerations Event” in 2019.4

On March 18, 2021, Drew Hirshfeld, performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Commerce for the IP and Director of the USPTO, emphasized that the “integration of AI technologies into next generation tools offers an exciting opportunity to enhance the quality and efficiency of patent and trademark examination.”5 He pointed out to the following USPTO’s ongoing AI-related efforts:

employing AI to perform an automatic patent classification;6

employing AI to automatically route patent applications to the “right” Examiners;7

employing AI to enhance prior-art search tools;8 and

employing AI to automatically generate templates of office actions.9

In this paper, the authors present their views on how the patentees could benefit from the USPTO’s AI-based tools deployed to various USPTO’s processes.

Read the full article at the link below.