[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 109 (Tuesday, June 7, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 34669-34671]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-12139]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Patent and Trademark Office

[Docket No. PTO-P-2021-0057]


Events for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies 
Partnership

AGENCY: United States Patent and Trademark Office, Department of 
Commerce.

ACTION: Notice of meetings.

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SUMMARY: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is 
focused on incentivizing more innovation,

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inclusively and in key technology areas such as artificial intelligence 
(AI) and other emerging technologies (ET) (e.g., quantum computing, 
synthetic biology, blockchain, precision medicine, and virtual 
reality), protecting that innovation and bringing it to impact to 
enhance our country's economic prosperity and national security and to 
solve world problems. In recent years, the USPTO has actively engaged 
its stakeholders regarding AI/ET. The USPTO has promoted the importance 
of intellectual property (IP) rights as an incentive to foster and 
protect innovation in these critical areas. To expand and scale these 
efforts, the USPTO seeks to form a partnership (AI/ET Partnership) with 
the AI and ET communities, including, for example, academia, 
independent inventors, small businesses, industry, other government 
agencies, nonprofits, and civil society. The AI/ET Partnership will 
provide an opportunity to bring stakeholders together through a series 
of engagements to share ideas, feedback, experiences, and insights on 
the intersection of IP and AI/ET. Through this notice, the USPTO 
announces a series of meetings exploring AI/ET-related initiatives at 
the USPTO and IP policy issues impacted by AI and other ET.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Matthew Sked, Senior Legal Advisor, 
Office of Patent Legal Administration, at 571-272-7627. You can also 
send inquiries to [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 
    I. Background on the AI/ET Efforts at the USPTO: While AI has the 
potential to provide tremendous societal and economic benefits and 
foster a new wave of innovation and creativity, the USPTO recognizes it 
poses novel challenges and opportunities for IP policy. To this end, in 
January 2019, the USPTO hosted a conference regarding the IP policy 
considerations of AI. The event consisted of six panels of IP 
specialists from around the world discussing the impact of AI in such 
areas as patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and copyright. Recordings 
of the event are available at www.uspto.gov/about-us/events/artificial-intelligence-intellectual-property-policy-considerations.
    Continuing its outreach to stakeholders, the USPTO issued a request 
for public comments in August 2019 on patenting AI inventions. 
Particularly, the notice sought comments on various patent policy 
issues, such as AI's impact on inventorship, subject matter 
eligibility, written descriptions, enablement, and the level of 
ordinary skill in the art. 84 FR 44889. In October 2019, the USPTO 
issued a second request for comments on additional IP policy and AI 
topics, such as copyright, trademarks, data protections, and trade 
secret law. 84 FR 58141. The USPTO received numerous comments on both 
notices from a wide range of stakeholders, including individuals, 
associations, corporations, law firms, academics, and foreign IP 
offices. The requests for comments and the public comments received are 
available at www.uspto.gov/initiatives/artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-reports.
    In response to the public comments, the USPTO published a report 
titled ``Public Views on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual 
Property Policy'' in October 2020. The report takes a comprehensive 
look at a wide variety of stakeholder views on the impact of AI across 
the IP landscape and provides AI context, legal background, and public 
comment synthesis for each of the questions presented in the two 
requests for comments. The USPTO has used the report to focus on issues 
for continued exploration and stakeholder engagement to bolster the 
understanding and reliability of IP rights for AI and other ET. The 
full report is available at www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USPTO_AI-Report_2020-10-07.pdf.
    Also in October 2020, the USPTO issued a report titled ``Inventing 
AI: Tracing the diffusion of artificial intelligence with U.S. 
patents.'' This report sought to gauge the volume and potential impact 
of AI innovation through patent data. The report found that AI is 
increasingly important for invention, and it diffuses broadly across 
technologies, inventor-patentees, organizations, and geography. 
Particularly, AI patent applications increased by more than 100% from 
2002-2018 and spread to over 42% of all technology subclasses by 2018. 
The full report is available at www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OCE-DH-AI.pdf. The AI patent dataset that was the basis of 
the report is also available to the public at www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/economic-research/research-datasets/artificial-intelligence-patent-dataset. This novel dataset can help researchers, policymakers, and the 
public explore the growing role of AI in invention.
    More recently, in July 2021, in response to a request by Senators 
Thom Tillis, Tom Cotton, Mazie Hirono, and Chris Coons, the USPTO 
published a request for information to solicit views from stakeholders 
on the impact of the current state of patent subject matter eligibility 
jurisprudence on investment and innovation in critical technologies. 86 
FR 36257. These critical technologies include quantum computing, AI, 
precision medicine, diagnostic methods, and pharmaceutical treatments. 
The USPTO will use the comments received in response to this request as 
the basis for a report to Congress on the topic. The request for 
information and the public comments received are available at 
www.regulations.gov/docket/PTO-P-2021-0032/document.
    In addition, the USPTO recently hosted several events regarding AI 
and ET. In April 2021, for example, the USPTO held a virtual AI and ET 
small business event to foster collaboration, networking, and business 
partnerships in the AI and ET space. Additionally, in October 2021, the 
USPTO hosted a joint conference with the U.S. Copyright Office titled 
``Copyright law and machine learning for AI: where are we and where are 
we going?,'' which explored existing copyright laws and policies as 
they apply to machine learning, as well as potential alternative 
solutions in this space.
    These engagements support and align with the National AI Initiative 
Act of 2020, which became law on January 1, 2021. The purpose of the 
National AI Initiative is to ensure continued U.S. leadership in AI 
research and development and the use of trustworthy AI systems in the 
public and private sectors; prepare the present and future U.S. 
workforce for the integration of AI systems across all sectors of the 
economy and society; and coordinate ongoing AI research, development, 
and demonstrations among the civilian agencies, the Department of 
Defense, and the Intelligence Community to ensure that each informs the 
work of the others. To continue its support for the National AI 
Initiative, the USPTO is creating a partnership with the AI/ET 
community, including, for example, academia, independent inventors, 
small businesses, industry, other government agencies, nonprofits, and 
civil society.
    II. Formation of the AI/ET Partnership: To build on its previous 
efforts to encourage innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship in AI 
and other ET and promote predictable and reliable IP rights for these 
technologies, the USPTO announces the formation of the AI/ET 
Partnership. The AI/ET Partnership will be an ongoing, cooperative 
effort between the USPTO and the AI/ET community to explore various 
issues resulting from the intersection of ET, including AI, and IP 
policy. In particular, the USPTO seeks to engage the AI/ET community on 
ongoing and future AI/ET efforts at the USPTO to promote greater 
awareness,

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openness, and inclusivity. These efforts include the USPTO's use of AI 
and ET within the agency to further its goals of enhancing the quality 
and efficiency of patent and trademark examination. Additionally, the 
USPTO seeks to better understand the public's views on the IP policy 
issues that uniquely affect the AI/ET community to help inform the 
USPTO's future work in the AI/ET IP policy space. The AI/ET Partnership 
will commence with a series of meetings exploring AI/ET-related 
initiatives at the USPTO and IP policy issues impacted by AI and other 
ET. Further information on the AI/ET Partnership, future events, and 
participation in these events is available on the AI/ET Partnership web 
page at www.uspto.gov/aipartnership.
    III. AI/ET Meeting Series: The AI/ET Partnership will begin with a 
series of virtual events. The inaugural event will explore various 
patent policy issues including subject matter eligibility, 
inventorship, and disclosure practice. Future events will engage 
stakeholders on other IP policy issues and USPTO efforts in the AI/ET 
space.
    The USPTO will hold the inaugural Partnership meeting virtually on 
June 29, 2022, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. ET. For registration and 
further information on the AI/ET Partnership series, please visit the 
AI/ET Partnership web page at www.uspto.gov/aipartnership.

Katherine K. Vidal,
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of 
the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
[FR Doc. 2022-12139 Filed 6-6-22; 8:45 am]
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