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Using AI Before the Patent Office

USPTO guidance, April 2024. Read from the primary document; quotations verified against its own text.

What it says

In April 2024 the USPTO issued guidance confirming that existing duties of candor, signature certification, reasonable inquiry and confidentiality govern the use of AI tools in matters before the Office, without prohibiting AI-assisted drafting and without creating a general requirement to disclose that AI was used.

The guidance is notable for what it declines to do.

It does not prohibit AI-assisted drafting, and it does not create a general requirement to disclose that AI was used.

What it does is confirm that the duties already on the books apply unchanged: candor, signature certification, reasonable inquiry, confidentiality. No new rules for AI, and no relief from the old ones.

The signature and reasonable-inquiry duties are the ones that do the work. A signature certifies that an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances was made, and that certification is unaffected by what produced the draft.

What This Does Not Decide

We publish this corpus with AI assistance, which is a reason for more care here, not less. This is the record with the most direct bearing on the tool that produced these pages. Reporting what the Office said is description. Presenting any workflow, including ours, as compliant is not.
  • It does not say whether a particular firm's AI practice complies.
  • It does not say whether a specific submission satisfied reasonable inquiry.
  • It concerns professional duties, not patentability.

Educational, not legal advice. This page reports what an authority says. Applying it to a matter is work for a registered practitioner with the file in front of them.

Sources

  • USPTO, Guidance on Use of Artificial Intelligence-Based Tools in Practice Before the USPTO (Apr. 2024)
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