The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) is no doubt an ambitious bill. In terms of its design, the proposed legislation attempts to deal with each of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Alice, Mayo and Myriad, plus all of their progeny applications thereafter engendered by the Federal Circuit, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), all the way down to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) examining corp. In a nutshell, the bill, if passed, would return us to a time when Bilski was the law of the land, which will no doubt be welcomed by many innovators. As is the case with many ambitious endeavors, there will be those who doubt its value. In this case, there are critics who are doubtful of the bill’s effectiveness when it comes to patenting artificial intelligence (AI). Since Alice v. CLS Bank, the high likelihood of an AI invention being found to be directed to an abstract idea has created the worrisome possibility of precluding an entire field capable of generating worlds of foundational technology from patentability. Indeed, it is hard to fathom a world where things like the Star Trek computer, with its endless knowledge base and control capabilities, could be patent ineligible, but that is where we are at present because the very thing that makes AI so useful is its abstract nature, which often defies concrete characterization. One of the most challenging aspects of claiming AI effectively in order to capture its commercial value requires a heavy reliance on functional computer language rather than traditional positive machine or apparatus claiming, as these components are vulnerable to very easy design arounds when it comes to practical AI deployment.
Full report : What the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act Means for Artificial Intelligence Inventions.
