United States of America: Opened consultation on USPTO inquiry into the impact of AI on certain patentability determinations

On 30 April 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) opened a public consultation to gather comments on the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on aspects of patent protection regulation until 29 July 2024. These include prior art, the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA), and patentability determinations. The consultation is intended to address the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in the context of intellectual property, with a particular focus on machine learning and AI development. This call for comments follows several stakeholder sessions and prior requests for feedback, which have highlighted a diversity of opinions on the impact of AI on IP evaluations, with particular focus on obviousness determinations and PHOSITA assessments. Furthermore, the increasing integration of AI raises questions about the expansiveness and accessibility of prior art, given AI's capability to process and generate vast amounts of data, which may affect how prior art is identified and used in patent examinations.