Floods the office
Bonadio 21 – Enrico Bonadio (Lecturer at City University London – The City Law School, PhD from University of Florence, and LLB from University of Pisa), Luke McDonagh (Assistant Professor of Law at London School of Economics, PhD from Queen Mary, University of London, and LLM from London School of Economics), and Plamen Dinev (Lecturer at Goldsmiths University of London, PhD in Intellectual Property Law at City Law School, and LLM at Leiden University). “Artificial Intelligence as Inventor: Exploring the Consequences for Patent Law” Intellectual Property Quarterly 1 (2021) 48-66. Accessed October 18, 2022. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3798767
In addition to the legal considerations above, there are also sound policy reasons to deny large volumes of nonsensical computer-generated text prior art status, including the need to discourage the fabrication of knowledge aimed at preventing competitors from obtaining patents in that specific area. Such disclosures could be considered as being artificially constructed in bad faith by entities which are exclusively interested in preventing the acquisition of patents by those who actually invest time and resources in research and development. Hattenbach and Glucoft further argue that publishing large amounts of nonsensical claims may impinge on the fundamental aims of the patent system and ultimately have a negative effect on social welfare: Publishing masses of nonsense achieves the opposite of what these requirements seek to accomplish—it dilutes the set of actual public knowledge, burying genuinely useful information and leaving society worse off.48
From a more practical standpoint, there are also genuine concerns that the proliferation of claims produced via AI may burden the patent offices by increasing their workload to an unprecedented extent. 49 The growth of prior art references requiring examination may jeopardise the efficiency, sustainability and the level of scrutiny currently applied to applications.50 Maintaining the existing examination standards may what therefore require more resources to be allocated to survey the enormous prior art universe, greatly increasing the costs associated with examination and requiring examiners who are both knowledgeable in the field and skilled at analysing computer-generated texts.51