Associates around the country today are drafting motions, patent applications, and other documents using some version of ChatGPT.   Of course, If I were a judge or examiner, I might also be interested in using AI to help facilitate my decision-making.  ChatGPT is good for that as well and can provide a reasoned structure, including identifying of prior art and obviousness standards.

If you recall your last writing course, the professor repeatedly focused attention on the audience. “Who is the audience you are looking to persuade?”  Moving forward, it appears that we really do have a new audience for our writing — AI advisors.  This calls to mind the great tape recorder scene from Real Genius (1985). Members of the class began just leaving tape-recorders to record the  boring lecture; eventually, the professor also just brought in his own taped lecture to speak to the machines.

Automated Examination: On the patent prosecution side, we may shortly be in a situation where AI systems will be able to conduct patent examination at the same level of quality as a typical human examiner.  It seems obvious that we should rely upon the AI to at least facilitate examination.  The bigger question is whether to eliminate the first-level human bureaucracy all together and move to an automated examination system.  The benefit of that process is that it could be done very rapidly (immediate allowance / rejection) and potentially at a much lower cost.  Certainly, PCT systems could move toward substantially lowering costs with initial search reports and examination being done automatically.

What do you think?