How AI is Democratizing Patent Practice

James Dyson, the British inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner and the founder of the Dyson Company, figured out learning a while ago. In his autobiography Against All Odds, he says this about learning: “Anyone can become an expert in anything in six months, whether it is hydrodynamics for boats or cyclonic systems for vacuum cleaners.” Elon Musk, who famously taught himself rocket science and founded SpaceX, would have agreed. Both Dyson and Musk were voracious readers who resorted to reading books to solve the biggest problems in their lives. And they did that before there was generative AI.  

When it comes to crunching books and giving you their essence, there is no tool that comes close to AI. AI has supercharged learning for this generation. And AI has come as a boon for patent agents, who given their narrow scientific qualifications are often called upon to draft and file patents in different technical areas beyond their core expertise. There is no subject that you cannot tackle now. You can start with prompts like “Explain to me like I am five” and go wherever your task takes you to. AI’s impact in revolutionizing patent practice and making it more accessible and efficient can be experienced in three areas: (1) the evolution of IP as digital assets; (2) new digital tools of patent practice and (3) learning and teaching patent law.

IP as Digital Assets

The digitalization of the patent system and its consequent impact on patent practice has resulted in patents evolving into valuable digital assets. Patent offices around the world now prefer digital filing to physical filing and also give appropriate fee concessions to promote the digital option. Digital assets are amenable to the use of AI in a manner in which physical assets are not. The UK IPO recently introduced an AI-powered patent allocation tool that reduced the time taken to allocate the patent application to the right team from 14 days to a few seconds. The reduction of time is the hallmark of the use of AI. Prior art searches, drafting specifications and replying to office actions can now be done at a fraction of the time. The nature of ownership of these assets has also changed with the UK IPO allowing a single user account for registering all types of IP. The digital nature of these assets will not only help in the creation and examination of the IP but with the introduction of blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies, smart contracts can be embedded into these digital assets opening up new avenues for licensing technology.  

Digital Tools in Patent Practice 

The average time it used to take a patent agent to draft a patent was always computed in days. Almost every AI-powered patent tool today promises to reduce that time to minutes. For instance, Added Matter not only promises to generate the patent specification in minutes, it also gives everything you need to draft and prosecute a patent - it combines patent drafting, patent prosecution, document analysis and invalidity arguments in one platform. Many decades ago, in 1989, the European Patent Office pioneered efficient patent examination by combining examination and search together by allowing the same examiner who did the search to substantively examine the patent as well. They called it BEST - Bringing Examination and Search Together. With AI, it is time to bring drafting and search together. Just like the plagiarism checker software that does real-time checks, it is now possible to check prior art while you are drafting a patent - in real time, so that you can now preempt the office actions that can come your way while drafting your patents.

AI and digital tools have streamlined every process in the patent value chain. Patent offices now employ AI tools for patent classification and allocation. Patent professionals now benefit from AI-powered tools that give them insights on drafting, prosecution, prior art and invalidity. With IPOs now embracing cloud storage, record keeping would become the least of concerns for patent agents. The apprehension of taking up a 20-year commitment while filing a patent is no longer there when storage is online. Searching for a 20-year-old email in your inbox is far less stressful than trying to locate a 20-year-old document in your office.

Teaching Patent Law

All these developments bring us to the matter that we are most excited about: teaching patent law in the age of AI. We are convinced that teaching patent law needs an alternative model. It need not be through long-form courses offered by WIPO and the e-learning portals of various patent offices. There should be a much more elegant way using AI. Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, says this in his book Brave New Words - How AI Will Revolutionize Education: “Generative AI can provide educators with new best practices, teaching techniques, and insights into their students’ learning gaps.” Traditional teaching techniques almost never tell a teacher about the students’ learning gaps, at least not until some kind of testing is done. AI offers a completely new way of learning patent law based on the level at which you are. Learning and teaching patent law can now be personalized in a way like never before.