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The European Patent Office (EPO) has started a specialized platform for developers, offering streamlined access to patent information pertaining to space technology. The platform is tailored for space-related inventions and grants users straightforward access to a wide array of patent documents covering more than 60 technical areas within cosmonautics and space observation. To further aid users, patent examiners have crafted sophisticated search strategies for Espacenet, the premier patent literature database.
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The AI revolution introduces new challenges for patent eligibility that current U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case law and USPTO policy are ill-equipped to handle. Alice Step 2, a widely misunderstood doctrine, risks becoming more confusing with AI inventions, as case law and examiner practices overemphasize the conventionality of computers in claims.
This scenario creates two problems for AI patent eligibility. Groundbreaking AI inventions often use generic computers and deserve patent protection, yet may be unjustly denied.
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The European Patent Office (EPO) has marked the first anniversary of the unitary patent system, which began on June 1, 2023. Over the past year, the EPO registered more than 27,500 unitary patents, accounting for about 25% of all European patents granted in that time. The Unified Patent Court (UPC), which also began operations a year ago, has handled 373 cases, though technical problems have posed challenges.
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On March 18, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has taken a step towards clearer patent records by issuing a memorandum to examiners on the importance of consistent analysis for "means-plus-function" and "step-plus-function" limitations. This clarifies what inventors need to include in their applications to secure broader patent protection.
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The EPO unveiled the 'Deep Tech Finder' in October of last year. This free and online tool allows deep tech companies, researchers, and investors to easily discover European startups that have filed patent applications with the European Patent Office (EPO) and are ripe for investment. The focus of this tool is on companies with significant potential to introduce groundbreaking technologies to the European market.
As of May 2024, there are 8320 startups in the database, categorized into more than thirty industry segments and over fifty technology fields.
