For patent and trademark offices, law firms and corporations seeking to automate intellectual property operations and optimize decision making, artificial intelligence is now considered business critical. In this blog, Vashe Kanesarajah, Head of Strategy, IP Organization at Clarivate, explores how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are progressing and what this means for the intellectual property ecosystem.
It is a critical time for intellectual property practitioners as they are seeing increased workloads and a reduction in overall resources. To alleviate these challenges, an increasing number of IP tools are harnessing the capabilities of AI with new applications.
For example, trademark attorneys can access search tools that use image recognition to identify similar image marks in seconds. Patent professionals can access patent information using search engines incorporating natural language processing.
With generative AI gaining widespread traction, as seen with Chat GPT, the topic of next-generation AI is raising questions across law firms, corporations, consumers and government bodies alike. Generative AI has the potential to assist in diverse tasks –drafting and reviewing patent applications, answering complex technical questions for R&D, improving trademark risk assessments and even composing memos and briefs. However, IP practitioners need to tread carefully as AI can only ever be as good as the input data.
How can next-generation AI help IP practitioners?
For those striving to enhance decision-making and automate IP operations, AI is considered a necessary evolution. While AI has been explored in the IP space for several years, generative AI has put a spotlight on AI and ML and is accelerating its adoption to support various IP use-cases. In fact, 80% of law firm leaders acknowledge the potential applications for generative AI in legal work.
Yet, it’s not clear how generative AI should be applied in the legal space, and plenty of practical and ethical issues remain open. Questions remain around how algorithms work, if the underlying data is accurate, risk of inaccurate information being generated, and ultimately how confident legal professionals can be when relying on the output. Additionally, there are concerns about the potential security risks associated with generative AI, which could expose organizations, law firms and governments to new vulnerabilities.
IP practitioners are looking for answers to important questions, as they balance the opportunities and risks related to new applications of AI:
- How can trademark practitioners use AI to assess trademark similarity and predict litigation outcomes while ensuring the data and models are transparent, explainable and reliable?
- How can patent analysts use AI to expand their research and identify highly relevant documents without revealing confidential innovations prior to securing patent rights?
- How can IP attorneys automate drafting opposition complaints with confidence that the draft is accurate?
- How can R&D conduct technical intelligence, without any IP risks to the company?
- How can IP operation managers automate docketing tasks and improve cost forecasting without exposing confidential, proprietary information to unwanted privacy and security risks?
The importance of data and expertise when developing AI solutions
AI solutions can quickly extract deeper insights from large volumes of data, such as millions of patent or trademark records. The reliability and validity of these insights depends on the types of training data used.
As AI technology and access to open data advances, it becomes easier and quicker for solution providers to develop AI-based solutions using publicly available data. However, relying on public data comes at a cost. AI built on open access data is prone to deliver biased and less reliable results. These risks intensify when solution providers become entirely dependent on open-source data at the expense of creating their own enhanced content.
In contrast, responsible AI development involves a comprehensive approach that combines deep expertise from data scientists, subject matter experts, practitioners, content specialists and technology teams. This collaborative effort, combined with the utilization of large volumes of clean, interconnected and curated data will ensure accuracy, minimize risk and deliver reliable results.
How to identify reliable AI solutions that fit your IP needs
When evaluating the effectiveness and reliability of AI-based IP solutions, there are five fundamental elements to consider:
- What security, policy and company standards do AI models need to adhere to in order to mitigate risk for the organization and its stakeholders?
- Which IP use-cases require AI? What level of risk and demand is associated with these applications of AI?
- Is the AI solution trained on data that is clean, interconnected, structured and prepared for context?
- Does that data include proprietary sources that add additional insights unavailable through publicly available data?
- Does the solution provider have access to experienced patent and trademark analysts to validate the data, verify outputs and finetune the AI models?
Incorporating these questions into the vetting process helps IP practitioners better prepare for conversations with AI-based IP solution providers. The combination of these five crucial elements ensure the meticulous selection, development and deployment of AI models, underpinned by a deep knowledge of IP data, IP practitioners needs, and the technology infrastructure.
Committed to responsible AI that helps our IP customers think forward
Clarivate has a long-standing history in responsibly investing in and developing innovative IP technology. Our commitment is to leverage AI responsibly to help our customers confidently think forward as they embrace future technologies, knowing they can rely on our unwavering partnership. With decades of experience implementing AI to enhance our tools and solutions, we understand how to synergize our proprietary, best-in-class data with deep IP expertise to deliver trusted AI tools.
We also understand the importance of fostering a culture of experimentation while upholding standards of accuracy, security and reliability. In doing so, we aim to deliver next generation IP solutions that our customers can trust to transform their business.
AI tools available for IP customers today
At Clarivate, we offer a range of patent, trademark and IP case law solutions that leverage AI to help IP practitioners automate processes and optimize decision making. To learn more about our AI solutions for IP, contact our team today.
