IBM’s Watson: A Natural Assistant for Patent Attorneys?
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From a patent attorney’s perspective, we could use Watson’s expertise in quickly and successfully completing many of the tasks we’re required to do, such as evaluating inventions, searching for prior art or discovering infringers. The area that we’re exploring right now at IBM is improving patent quality—an area that our company has long endeavored to help enhance through projects such as Peer to Patent, International Collaborative Examination and Patent Quality Index.
In order to improve patent quality, it is vitally important that claim scope be certain. The claims are the very essence of a patent and should precisely define a plot in the intellectual property landscape that the owner can prevent others from trespassing upon. However, claims are often unclear and ambiguous for a variety of reasons.
At the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), examiners have a limited amount of time to spend on any single patent application, and they often focus on finding prior art rather than on ensuring that the claims are unambiguous, as required by law. Additionally, anticipating every potential ambiguity is a daunting task. Like finding the best prior art, it cannot be done perfectly all the time with today’s technology.
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