Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to produce a new wave of innovation and creativity. At the same time, it poses novel challenges and opportunities for intellectual property (IP) policy, such as:
- How is AI being used to enforce IP rights, protect inventions, and create new business models?
- How will AI alter the management and organization of research, innovation, and commercialization?
- What are the copyright implications when AI is used to create new works or when copyrighted works are used to “train” artificial intelligence systems?
- How will AI affect trademark protection and branding?
- These and similar critical questions about AI and IP will be examined at this all-day conference organized by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It will bring together leading thinkers, policy makers, academics, and practitioners to examine the growing capabilities of AI, its potential economic impacts, and implications for IP policy and law.
USPTO Director Andrei Iancu will deliver opening remarks. An exhibit featuring booths from a number of companies and institutions showcasing their AI technologies will run concurrently with the conference.
Agenda
Six panels featuring IP specialists from around the world — including experts from the United States, Canada, China, and Europe — will consider the topics listed below. The full agenda can be viewed here.
- Economic frameworks and impacts: How will AI impact how we innovate and create, produce and deliver new products and services, and work and engage with one another? How might the new tools and insights offered by AI improve our ability to recommend and assess changes to IP policy?
- Patents and Trade Secrets: How can AI-related inventions be protected? What are the challenges that inventors and rights-holders face, whether they are a Fortune 500 company, a start-up, or a nonprofit?
- Trademarks: Will AI change the likelihood of confusion and liability? How will it impact branding of products and the protection of trademarks?
- Copyright: Who is the author of AI-generated content? Are such works copyrightable? What policy implications arise from the use of copyrighted works for the purposes of machine learning?
- IP enforcement: Counterfeit goods make up an estimated $461 billion or 2.5 percent of all global trade. How is AI improving counterfeit detection? And how can we leverage new technologies to solve this age-old problem?
- International perspectives: How are other major economies addressing AI, and in what ways do they differ from the U.S. approach? How do those differences matter to U.S. companies and researchers?
Exhibitors:
The following companies will have exhibits showcasing AI technologies during the conference. Click on the company name to view a description of their display.
Booz Allen Hamilton
Corsearch, Inc.
Coresearch will exhibit new products that utilize AI, including products used in its name creation, clearance process, and online band protection services.
Entrupy
Entrupy will be demonstrating its suite of AI technology products, which includes a handheld device and Entrupy–configured iPod that enables the detection of counterfeit goods. The company has generated “fingerprints” of over 45 million authentic and fake items. Based on the captured microscopic images, Entrupy’s software uses machine-learning algorithms to predict whether an imaged object is genuine or counterfeit.
Google Inc.
Google will display several internal models used to improve efficiency, including how a machine-learning model can calculate claim breadth, how similarity technology can assist with landscaping and standards, and how cross-licensing can be improved with AI. Representatives from Google Patents will present how machine-learning models have helped to classify non-patent literature documents with Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) codes and how similarity technology can be used to retrieve and rank search results.
National Science Foundation
Dr. Paul Morris will demonstrate the NSF’s enterprise search tool, which clusters unstructured text from documents into thematic areas. The tool’s visualizations enable the NSF to manage huge volumes of research submissions and place these documents into panels and related clusters. Additionally, the tool automatically assigns domain experts and reviewers to each submitted document. There are numerous similarities between this NSF process and the steps taken when a patent application is submitted to the USPTO.
Palantir Technologies
Perception Partners
Specifio
TELES Patent Rights International GmbH
TELES PRI will demonstrate a patent-oriented prototype of IES focusing on substantive U.S. patent law and following frameworks contained in recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The IES prototype is a deterministic AI system that enables the drafting — semi-automatically and interactively — of robust emerging technology claimed inventions and testing them in real time. Implementation, using relevant decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and/or the Patents Trial and Appeals Board, will show IES’s actual workings, for example, incorporating criteria laid forth in such decisions as DDR Holdings (regarding computer-implemented patent claims), Myriad Genetics (regarding human genes), and UC Berkeley (regarding CRISPR patents).
TT Consultants
Modules include:
Automated Novelty Checker
Automated Evidence of Use Generator
Automated Technology Evaluator
Automated Idea Generator (Beta)
UC Berkeley College of Engineering/Haas School of Business
U.S. Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR)/ Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program Office
The SBIR/STTR Programs Office will exhibit materials highlighting the DoD’s SBIR and STTR programs available to innovators working in the area of machine learning and AI.
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a U.S. government program, coordinated by the U.S. Small Business Administration, in which federal agencies reserve a portion of their research budgets for contracts or grants to small businesses. The Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program funds cooperative research and development projects with small businesses in partnership with nonprofit research institutions (such as universities) to move research to the marketplace. Annually, the DoD STTR program funds more than $100 million in research. The DoD SBIR program provides more than $1 billion in research funds to small businesses each year.
Accessibility and additional information:
This event is accessible to individuals with disabilities. To inquire about or request accommodations, or for non-press inquiries, please contact Kortney Hammonds at the USPTO’s Office of Policy and International Affairs, telephone (571) 272-1626.