Patent and Trademark Office February 14, 2023 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is extending the comment period for the notice titled ``Request for Comments on USPTO Initiatives to Ensure the Robustness and Reliability of Patent Rights'' that was published in the Federal Register on October 4, 2022. The notice's comment period was previously extended until February 1, 2023. The comment period is now extended a second time; this will be the last extension of the comment period.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) plays an important role in incentivizing and protecting innovation, including innovation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure continued U.S. leadership in AI and other emerging technologies (ET). In June 2022, the USPTO announced the formation of the AI/ET Partnership, which provides an opportunity to bring stakeholders together through a series of engagements to share ideas, feedback, experiences, and insights on the intersection of intellectual property and AI/ET. To build on the AI/ET Partnership efforts, the USPTO is seeking stakeholder input on the current state of AI technologies and inventorship issues that may arise in view of the advancement of such technologies, especially as AI plays a greater role in the innovation process. As outlined in sections II to IV below, the USPTO is pursuing three main avenues of engagement with stakeholders to inform its future efforts on inventorship and promoting AI-enabled innovation: a series of stakeholder engagement sessions; collaboration with academia through scholarly research; and a request for written comments to the questions identified in section IV. The USPTO encourages stakeholder engagement through one or more of these avenues.