Artificial intelligence and patent law: some reflections

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution and its new developments address on a global scale the automation and interconnection of numerous activities, allowing intellectual tasks, that, until now, could only be performed by human beings,to be executed by new systems and programmes. The creations developed by such ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) can and should be protected by Intellectual Property Rights. In the specific field of technical creations, patent law is the most suitable option, although not the only one, for their protection. However, the undeniable fact that, on the one hand, new AI creations are essentially based on software and algorithms and, on the other hand, that the patent system was created to protect hardware, makes it necessary to reflect on whether or not the current patent system is adequate to the legal protection needs posed by new technologies. More specifically, it must be asked, as this article does, whether the time has come to address a profound change in the legal system of patents.