US Patent Office Issues New Guidelines For AI-Assisted Inventions (reuters.com) 18
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued new guidelines outlining when inventions created with the help of AI can be patented. From a report: USPTO Director John Squires said on Wednesday in a notice set to be published Friday, that the office considers generative AI systems to be "analogous to laboratory equipment, computer software, research databases, or any other tool that assists in the inventive process."
"They may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention," the office said. "When one natural person is involved in creating an invention with the assistance of AI, the inquiry is whether that person conceived the invention under the traditional conception standard."
The office reiterated its guidance from last year that AI itself cannot be considered an inventor under U.S. patent law. However, it rejected the approach taken by the PTO during former President Joe Biden's administration for deciding when AI-assisted inventions are patentable, which relied on a standard normally used to determine when multiple people can qualify as joint inventors.
"They may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention," the office said. "When one natural person is involved in creating an invention with the assistance of AI, the inquiry is whether that person conceived the invention under the traditional conception standard."
The office reiterated its guidance from last year that AI itself cannot be considered an inventor under U.S. patent law. However, it rejected the approach taken by the PTO during former President Joe Biden's administration for deciding when AI-assisted inventions are patentable, which relied on a standard normally used to determine when multiple people can qualify as joint inventors.
No creativity, talent or specific knowlege require (Score:4, Interesting)
No creativity or talent or specific knowledge required.
Whoever has the "biggest computer" can lock up all of human progress and collect rents for it into the future.
Somehow I don't think this is what the patent system was intended to accomplish.
Just like excessive copyright terms, patents have become a roadblock on the road to progress.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want real progress, repeal the IP laws. Man has always made things and always will. Money just speeds things up a little, and as far as things are going right now, a little slow down wouldn't hurt.
Re: (Score:3)
No creativity or talent or specific knowledge required.
Whoever has the "biggest computer" can lock up all of human progress and collect rents for it into the future.
Somehow I don't think this is what the patent system was intended to accomplish.
Just like excessive copyright terms, patents have become a roadblock on the road to progress.
What should be downright illegal is the hoarding of patents in “war chests” that sit unused for shits and fucks sake.
People or corporations may secure an idea, but if they fail to use the damn thing, then in many cases it should go up for auction or back in public domain. Tough shit if companies feel like they “need” a war chest. They don’t, and they’re killing innovation as a result.
Lastly, I don’t care what the patent office has to say about AI being little more
Re: (Score:2)
How do you reach the conclusion that you did? From TFS:
"They may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention," the office said. "When one natural person is involved in creating an invention with the assistance of AI, the inquiry is whether that person conceived the invention under the traditional conception standard."
On its face, that contradicts the idea that Whoever has the "biggest computer" can lock up all of human progress and collect rents for it into the future -- a natural person still needs to conceive of the invention, rather than patenting the output of tool that happens to be the "biggest computer".
Re: (Score:2)
No creativity or talent or specific knowledge required.
You’re giving the hardware way too much credit here. Drop a random into a state-of-the-art drug discovery or materials pipeline and they’re not going to “lock up progress,” they’re going to drown in garbage candidates. The stuff that still matters – and that the law still cares about for inventorship – is choosing the problem, defining the constraints, designing or tuning the models, sanity-checking outputs, and turning one candidate into something that works in the
Umm, what about theft? (Score:2)
When the AI steals the ideas of others and presents it as a new idea to the AI user, it's still theft and the inventor is the original inventor and the ideas were on the open internet to be scraped by the AI and so is prior art.
Re: Umm, what about theft? (Score:2)
Yes, and since you can't defend a patent when prior art is out there, this scenario is already a non-starter.
You can file for that patent, and you might even get it, but your first infringement lawsuit is going to fail due to the prior art, making the patent a waste of money.
This scenario seems quite well addressed by existing patent rules.
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They do this already, and it's quite profitable for them. Given that they can outlast the cost of discovery while bleeding their target dry, then settle the lawsuit , without invalidating their bad patent, once their target calls uncle. Even if the target manages to win a lawsuit, there's plenty more bad patents to recoup their losses with. Even against the same target.
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That's a really good point.
And it may soon get even worse. USPTO has a rule change in the pipeline that will make it harder to challenge bad patents. The EFF is not amused:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]
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When the AI steals the ideas of others and presents it as a new idea to the AI user, it's still theft and the inventor is the original inventor and the ideas were on the open internet to be scraped by the AI and so is prior art.
You’re packing three different bodies of law into one spooky word, “theft,” and that muddies the water more than it helps. If it was your intent to muddy the waters, congratulations -- now go troll some other thread.
Think about it this way: If “the ideas were on the open internet,” then you’ve already answered the patent part yourself. Anything publicly disclosed before the filing date is prior art. If an AI regurgitates something that’s already out there, it does
Re: Umm, what about theft? (Score:2)
You should read what passes for OED discipline these days. You'd practically have to want to be caught doing something literally egregious to have even that authority asserted against you- there's a whole ocean of bigge
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Indeed it covers more than one area of law.
The two that were in my mind were (1) Copyright infringement and (2) patent infringement.
However I was using "theft" colloquially since I'm way too lazy to write like a lawyer.
Practical Field Lesson (Score:2)
If you are an inventor or any kind of "creative", and you get AI to make something cool, take credit for it as a human, you don't have to tell anybody its from AI. If somebody spots AI artifacts, just say "I used AI to assist me".
We have enough patents (Score:2)
Just asked LLMs to invent (Score:2)
The US patent office just stated they would accept patent applications for inventions made by AI. So please go ahead and invent something, make it something creative, new, but also profitable.
Unsurprisingly, the generated responses read like PR articles from contemporary "startups" that want to do something-something-AI while not having an idea how to technically implement their vision. And of course, the "ideas" sounded awfully similar to what one has seen in fictional literature.
So I guess the patent office will just receive AI-slop in addition to the often dysfun
LLMs are trained on prior art (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
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