Intellectual Property

  What is a provisional patent application? A provisional patent application (PPA) is a legal document that helps you obtain an early priority date for an invention easily. It lasts for 12 months, after which you must file a regular non-provisional patent application or PCT application. The protection is valid for 12 months, after which you must file a regular non-provisional patent application or PCT application.  It does not guarantee that your patent will be approved but its filing date starts the application process. Especially for startups or non-established inventors, the provisional application is a relatively affordable way to obtain a  “patent pending” label.  It is also common practice for many companies to use provisional applications to keep their invention secrets from the public eye for a longer period of time. Which countries have a PPA setup in their patent systems? PPAs are popular in the US as they are used by many inventors and startups. In the US,...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is present in every field nowadays from art, music, and finance to medicine. But there is still resistance to AI being officially accepted as an inventor. Let’s examine the recent developments regarding this topic. AI-generated inventions in the last 4 years  1.  DABUS case: In 2018, Stephen Thaler filed two European patent applications which he claimed DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) had invented. DABUS is an AI system that conceived 2 inventions for which Thaler filed patent applications in 17 jurisdictions listing it as the inventor. These were the first cases that challenged traditional patent laws of who can be recognized as an inventor. As Ryan Abbott, a University of Surrey law professor and author said, “We’re moving into a new paradigm where not only do people invent, people build artificial intelligence that can invent.” In 2019, USPTO rejected the patent applications saying that only humans can be rec...