System for the Team Supporting AI Examinations to be Enhanced to Achieve Efficient and Highest-Quality Examinations of AI-Related Inventions

1. Background

In January 2021, the JPO launched a Team Supporting AI Examinations, an internal body which consists of experts on AI examination, management officials, and other officials, and which is responsible for the development of an examination environment for AI-related inventions. These experts on AI examination will collect knowledge from the respective examination divisions, serving as a hub of examinations concerning AI-related inventions, provide consultation services to examiners outside the team and thereby support examiners in achieving efficient and highest-quality examinations.

Meanwhile, as is pointed out in the Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2023, with the advent of ChatGPT and other forms of easily publicly accessible AI, it is expected that AI will be utilized in creative processes in a wider range of fields to a greater degree than previously possible. To address this, the JPO needs to develop an examination system that makes it possible to support the examinations of AI-related inventions, including for fields where AI technology has not been utilized to date.

2. Enhancing a system for the team

On October 1, 2023, the JPO will increase the number of experts on AI examination from around 10 to around 40. Previously, the JPO had assigned experts on AI examination only to the examination offices in charge of the fields where AI technology is frequently used. Now it will assign one expert on AI examination to all examination offices, thereby enhancing the system for the team. It will provide experts on AI examination with opportunities to keep improving their knowledge on the latest AI technology, including by providing training courses by external experts and other lecturers. Through this effort, the team will be able to appropriately support examinations of AI-related inventions even in fields where AI technology has not been frequently used.

Moreover, the JPO will develop a system in which the team will share and organize the knowledge that experts on AI examination have accumulated through the consultation services that the experts have provided, and it will select useful case examples of examinations of AI-related inventions and publish them. Through presenting these case examples, the JPO will show applicants and other stakeholders how to implement patent examination practices involving AI-related inventions in an easy-to-understand manner, and it will also provide examiners with such case examples as reference, thereby contributing to securing the acceleration and highest-quality of examinations.

The JPO will strive to facilitate the efficiency and highest-quality of examinations of AI-related inventions by enhancing this system for the team.

Division in Charge

Examination Standards Office, Administrative Affairs Division, Patent and Design Examination Department (Physics, Optics, Social Infrastructure and Design), Japan Patent Office