CITMA 2019: AI use in retail has implications for TMs
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could remove human interaction from the retail process and create trademark law issues, the head of IP at US technology company International Business Machines ( IBM) has said.
Speaking yesterday, March 14 at the Chartered Institute for Trademark Attorneys spring conference, Sylvie Martin said AI developments would have a significant impact on trademark law because it will be harder to determine the guilty party when infringement occurs.
“At its foundation, trademark law is about humans and human interaction with brands,” she said.
An example of how this human interaction element is already being removed is through the intelligent digital assistant, such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa.
One problem this may pose for trademark law is in the scenario when an intelligent digital assistant recommends and then proceeds to buy a counterfeit or infringing product on behalf of the consumer.
Martin said this opens a debate as to whether the digital assistant could be classed as a secondary infringer for inducing the purchase of an infringing product.
“Today we have no case law around this, but in the future we see some new situations like this that will be interesting,” Martin said.
Another way in which retail has already been transformed by AI is through the implementation of self-service machines.
“Many forms of AI exist in a retail environment,” Martin said. “This is especially important in respect to trademarks, because retailing is the essence of trademark law”.
Martin predicted that by 2020, 80% of all customer service interactions in retail will be powered or influenced by artificial intelligence.
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