The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office continues to seek stakeholder input on AI-generated disclosures and patentability. Earlier this year, USPTO issued a public Request for Comment on the impact of artificial intelligence on prior art, the known understanding of a person of ordinary skill and how this effects patentability, specifically novelty and obviousness of a claimed invention. Additionally, the Office is hosting a listening session on these topics virtually and in person later this summer. The inquiries are significant and potential rule changes at the USPTO could completely upset the apple cart. In short, if AI-generated prior art is deemed known to the person of ordinary skill and can be used to destroy patentability, the role of novelty and non-obviousness from a human perspective may be minimized. We explore here the potential consequences of AI for our assessments of human invention.
The Impact of AI on Prior Art
AI can be used to explore multiple seemingly infinite permutations of inventive concepts. If AI-generated permutations that pre-date what would otherwise be a patentable invention are deemed to be prior art, the potential for patenting of human ingenuity may be whittled away.