Protecting artificial intelligence based software inventions. Hasit Seth had delivered this lecture for TechEx initiative of the Venture Centre in Pune, India.

1. Protecting AI Based
Software Inventions
HASIT B. SETH
Techex.in @Venture Centre, Pune
Only Series
09 January 2024
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

2. Introduction
♔Name: HASIT B. SETH
♔I am a disputes lawyer in India. My practice focuses on
commercial dispute resolution covering IP, construction,
contracts in litigation and arbitrations
♔I am licensed to practice law in New York and India
♔You are welcome to connect at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hbs and keep in touch
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

3. Outline
♔ Software Inventions
♔Unique Protectable Features of AI Inventions
♔ Inventions Including AI
♔ AI as the Inventor
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

4. Software Inventions
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

5. Nature of Software In Inventions
♔ The patent system was created around machines or
chemicals
♕ Mechanical
♕ Electrical
♕ Electronic
♕ Chemicals
♔ Machine = a system of cooperative parts
♔ Most machines involves transformation of energy or form
as “work”
♔ Software involves no transformation of energy or form
♔Yet, it gets job done!
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

6. Blind Men and the Elephant
♔ Copyright as protector of software inventions
♔ Different infringement standards of copyright vs. patents
♔ Inventive ideas lost in merely protecting expression of
idea under the copyright
♔ “Computer Programme Product” – Beauregard Claim
♔ “Technical Effect” – EU Patent Office
♔ USPTO – 101, 102 and 103 trinity was enough.
♔ Finding equivalents of software structures in physical
world is a hopeless and meaningless task.
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

7. The Silent Compromise
♔ Allow patenting of software inventions
♔ Maintain some required standard of “technical”-ness of
the invention
♔ Pretend that its not merely algorithms!
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

8. Unique Protectable Features
of AI Inventions
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

9. The seminal paper
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

10. Transformer Model
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021
Vaswani et al. Attention Is All You Need (2017)

11. Training Data Sets
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training%2C_va
lidation%2C_and_test_data_sets

12. Neural Networks, Layers, Transformers
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

13. Challenges
♔ It’s not just code, it’s data + code for AI inventions
♔ How does patent law protect data and relationships?
♔ Copyright law and neural networks?
♔ Patent law’s allergy to “printed matter” inventions, e.g.
fonts
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

14. Protectable Components
♔ Training Data-Sets
♔ Training models
♔ Transformative mechanisms
♔ Error rate reduction
♔ Optimisation methods
♔ Outputs
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

15. Inventions Including AI
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

16. Applications
♔ Text
♕ ChatGPT / Bard
♕ Code Pilot
♕ Text assistants in word processors
♕ Chatbots
♔ Media
♕ Dall-E
♕ Creatives, Creators
♕Music loop creators
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

17. AI as the Inventor
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021

18. Patent Offices & Courts
♔UK “Dabus” case – UK SC rejected AI as an inventor
♕ https://www.reuters.com/technology/ai-cannot-be-patent-
inventor-uk-supreme-court-rules-landmark-case-2023-12-20/
♔ A survey of Dabus around the world:
♕ https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/in-focus/ict/artificial-
intelligence.
(c) Hasit Seth, 2021