[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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