Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property
Artificial intelligence (Al) is increasingly driving important developments in technology and business. It is being employed across a wide range of industries with impact on almost every aspect of the creation. The availability of large amounts of training data and advances in affordable high computing power are fueling Al's growth. Al intersects with intellectual property (IP) in a number of ways.
There is no universal definition of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is generally considered to be a discipline of computer science that is aimed at developing machines and systems that can carry out tasks considered to require human intelligence. Machine learning and deep learning are two subsets of AI. In recent years, with the development of new neural networks techniques and hardware, AI is usually perceived as a synonym for “deep supervised machine learning”.
Machine learning uses examples of input and expected output (so called “structured data” or “training data”), in order to continually improve and make decisions without being programmed how to do so in a step-by-step sequence of instructions. This approach mimics actual biological cognition: a child learns to recognize objects (such as cups) from examples of the same objects (such as various kinds of cups). Today application of machine learning are widespread including email spam filtering, machine translation, voice, text and image recognition.
WIPO has implemented and continues to develop its own IP management services and tools using AI technologies, creating best-in-class applications of AI for the international IP system. Find out more about WIPO AI tools.
Read the full list of AI FAQs.
Sixth Session of the WIPO Conversation “Frontier technologies – AI Inventions”
AI inventions present the current patent system with a number of challenges. In order to provide better protection and embrace the full value of patents it is necessary to have timely, transparent and accessible standards for patent granting that market players can fully rely on. To harness the economic potential of AI it is important to understand the uncertainties faced by innovators and for IP Offices to consider how to best support AI innovation.
What are the market trends and how do these translate in terms of patent applications? How autonomous is AI actually, what role does it play either as part of the inventive process or as part of an invention? What questions does this raise for the IP system? And how are IP Offices supporting AI inventors?
The Sixth Session of the WIPO Conversation took place on September 21-22, 2022 and connected the views and stories from innovators and IP professionals to what is happening in the IP Offices around the world and aimed at sharing information and building awareness around patent examination practices, tools and guidelines for AI inventions.
Video on demand | Meeting documents | Summary of the meeting
First three sessions of the WIPO Conversation
The first three sessions of the WIPO Conversation looked on the broad conceptual questions raised by AI for the IP system, with a view to collectively formulating the questions that policymakers need to ask.
AI and IP Clearing House
AI is becoming a strategic capability for many governments across the globe. Strategies for the development of AI capacity and AI regulatory measures are being adopted with increasing frequency.
WIPO continuously collates and publishes the main government instruments of relevance to AI and IP with the aid of the Member States. Member States are invited to inform WIPO about any updates in their policies.
Open discussion and dialogue with Member States on IP and Frontier Technologies and AI
What’s next? WIPO General Assemblies’ side event!
WIPO, AI and IP: A Virtual Experience (archived)
The online exhibition, "WIPO: AI and IP, A Virtual Experience" held from September 2020 to March 2021 sought to foster a wider understanding of the relationship between IP Policy and AI and focused on examples of the use of AI in art, music, technology and entertainment.
Watch the archived version of the Exhibition
Introduction
IP Policy
Art
Music
Technology
