AI and Inventorship: Navigating the Uncertain Future of Patent Law
By: Lara Miller
The expanding role of artificial intelligence (AI) in society has been accompanied by significant concerns and unanswered questions across numerous sectors. One sector in which these questions have become particularly apparent is the patent system, where AI’s influence has begun to challenge longstanding doctrinal foundations. The patent law system was designed to provide exclusive rights to inventors for their novel, useful, and non-obvious inventions.[1] One of the primary requisites needed to obtain a patent is that the applicant must be the actual inventor of the invention that they are trying to get patented.[2] As a result of the increasing use of AI during the inventive process, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been confronted with numerous questions and challenges about how AI-assisted inventions should be treated.