TM lawyers discuss AI’s potential at MARQUES
AI systems are ‘sometimes’ better than humans | Machine learning and AI has an image problem | Simmons & Simmons | Spanish Patent and Trademark Office | Zuellig Pharma.
“Is AI better at trademarks than you?” That was the question posed by a panellist at the MARQUES 36th Annual Conference in Madrid this week.
The answer is “yes, sometimes,” according to Darren Meale, partner at Simmons & Simmons in London and a Deputy District Judge in the UK’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC).
In a presentation of AI inventions old and new, he first contextualised AI as a tool to enhance human intelligence and ability, citing calculators and spell checkers as examples of well-established AI that are faster and more accurate than most of us at maths and spelling.
Moving on to how AI can help lawyers, he introduced Rocketeer, “world’s first AI trademark lawyer”.
He claimed that the tool, which Meale has developed over the past eight years, can predict the outcome of future trademark disputes at the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) with 92% accuracy.
Rocketeer, which has been taught the rule and the outcome of 11,000 cases via machine learning, works by predicting the likelihood of confusion when comparing potentially similar trademarks within three or four seconds, said Meale.
He finished by saying: “Coming back to the initial question, ‘Is AI better at trademarks than you’, I would say is….it can do some parts of our job literally thousands of times faster than us and probably several times better.”
He said that “we tend to overestimate our abilities”, referring to AI’s better ability at sorting data, but he stressed its shortcomings too.
“Our job is made up of so many different parts, and an AI cannot do even a fraction of those. So the key to successfully adopting AI is to understand what it can do, understand definitely what it can't do, and then bring it into your teams to supplement your abilities and enhance your overall human team.”
Future gazing
Chairing the session, Peter Wild of Wildpeak in Singapore and member of the MARQUES Council and Programming Team, mused over the role of AI in the future.
Chips could be implanted in our brains, he said in his introduction to the session, adding that “lawyers will be cheaper and better and faster. Will this be the future? We don't know. It's not the present, so at the moment we do it the old fashioned way”.
He went on to say that artificial intelligence and blockchain are perceived as “a bit negative”.
“But when you look a bit closer—and that's what we're trying to do—things look much different. We will focus on the positive aspects of trademarks with artificial intelligence, and how blockchain can help us in our daily lives.”
He added that “there are the big topics like copyright questions”, presenting two near-identical artworks, one of which had been created by a human artist, and the other by a robot.
“Will blockchain eventually replace the traditional trademark recording system with trademark offices? There are deep philosophical questions—what happens if artificial intelligence runs loose and destroys us all? Is there a bias in artificial intelligence? How can we cope with that? Are robots racist?”
He added: “You know, at MARQUES we have a long tradition of focusing on solutions and common problems. So we don't close our eyes when it comes to the challenges.”
José Antonio Gil Celedonio, director-general of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO), in his contribution, said: “I would like to start by stating, my position is not going to be easy to defend today. In this room full of trademark owners or representatives of trademark owners…the challenges that artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies [pose to the] interests of public entities are not, of course, the same that you face in your positions in the private sector.
“This is the first caveat that I have to make, according to my duties as director of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office.”
He stated that the image of artificial intelligence is an important factor to take into account when talking about services provided by IP offices to users.
“And of course, we cannot avoid forgetting the most important intelligence in all our organisations, which is human intelligence; [humans] are the very foundation of the functioning of our national IP offices.”
However, he said that there is a need to be practical and “face the challenges of our future” and “combine current systems, based on human intelligence, with the novelties offered by new technologies”.
Blockchain-backed solutions
Antonio Gil Celedonio emphasised the need for IP offices to balance efficiency with financial sustainability, before considering how blockchain could be used in practice.
“The question about blockchain is [whether] we have to amend our laws to incorporate blockchains to our procedure in an external way..” For example, users could use blockchain methods to prove evidence, he added.
Michelle Tan of Zuellig Pharma, Singapore, also delivered a presentation of AI in action, this time via video link.
She emphasised how Zuellig’s eZTracker app, which is live in Asia, uses blockchain technology to ensure trust, security, scalability and transparency in healthcare supply chains, as well as help identify counterfeits and secure data.
Two of the conference workshops today, Thursday 22, will focus on the related topics of the metaverse and Web 3.0—respectively ‘Enforcement challenges in the metaverse’ and ‘Web 3.0: what is it and what’s the problem?’.
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