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21 June 2018Patents

TPN Europe 2018: ‘We are facing a new world’ with AI, says Microsoft patent attorney

In the coming years “artificial intelligence (AI) will become pervasive and touch every aspect of our lives and we’ll wonder how we ever did without it”, explained Sonia Cooper, senior patent attorney of IP policy and strategy at Microsoft.

Cooper made her prediction at Technology Patent Network Europe in London today, June 21.

Speaking on a panel titled “The Outlook for AI Patents”, Cooper was keen to extinguish any concerns about the role of AI in the future.

She said: “When we think about AI we perhaps think about robots taking over the world, or machines getting more and more intelligent and outperforming us. The reality, of course, is quite different.”

Rather than making human abilities redundant, AI is instead a set of technologies that “really complement human capabilities”, Cooper said.

For example, she said, most people will have already used AI during the course of their morning; AI is present when you call up a personal assistant application on a phone, or look up how to find a location online.

According to Cooper, “this is really just the beginning” as we are facing a “new world where machines and humans work very closely together” with complementary—not competing—skills and abilities.

When it comes to whether these intelligent machines are patentable, Cooper said there are “certainly unique challenges” facing applicants as well as patent offices.

Machine learning systems are often considered algorithms or mathematical methods, but in reality they are real world systems with real world applications, Cooper explained.

“AI is, in part, about enabling human ingenuity and complementing human ability”, she said, so for patent offices considering applications related to AI, context is key.

Alvin Lam, partner at Maucher Jenkins, added that patent offices have undergone “over a decade” of discussions to address the challenges of AI and patentability.

The European Patent Office is investing heavily in how to handle the patentability of AI-related inventions, added Howard Read, associate at Appleyard Lees.

He noted that determining how to protect inventions relating to AI is an area of challenge, which is reflected in the wider consideration of “how do jurisdictions keep up with the rate of technological change?”.

Patrick Courtney, board member at Standards in Laboratory Automation, said the European Commission is also “open to having those discussions” with stakeholders about how best to address the patentability of applications related to AI.

The Commission “doesn’t want to put laws in place that would cause problems; they want to hear what you have to say”, Courtney concluded.

TPN Europe is being hosted by World IP Review.

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