AI and inventorship guidance: Incentivizing human ingenuity and investment in AI-assisted inventions

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Director's Blog

AI and inventorship guidance: Incentivizing human ingenuity and investment in AI-assisted inventions

Blog by Kathi Vidal, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO

Today, based on the exceptional public feedback we’ve received, we announced our Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions in the Federal Register. The guidance, which is effective on February 13, 2024, provides instructions to examiners and stakeholders on how to determine whether the human contribution to an innovation is significant enough to qualify for a patent when AI also contributed. The guidance embraces the use of AI in innovation and provides that AI-assisted inventions are not categorically unpatentable. The guidance instructs examiners on how to determine the correct inventor(s) to be named in a patent or patent application for inventions created by humans with the assistance of one or more AI systems. Additionally, we’ve posted specific examples of hypothetical situations and how the guidance would apply to those situations to further assist our examiners and applicants in their understanding.

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