Drafting Patent Applications with AI – Why It Is Risky?
Recently, we have increasingly encountered situations where patent applications are drafted and filed with the Patent Office entirely using artificial intelligence, without the involvement of a patent attorney.
AI is a valuable tool. However, drafting a patent application solely with AI is a bad idea.
A patent application is not merely a technical description. It is a legal document, the quality of which depends on:
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knowledge of procedural practice and examination logic,
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understanding and application of local laws and regulations,
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strategic drafting that protects the essence of the invention, not merely the idea.
AI tends to generate descriptions that are overly general, unfocused, and unnecessarily wide. The situation becomes even more problematic when such an application is filed. During examination proceedings, the essence of the invention cannot be altered, meaning that fundamental shortcomings in the original drafting cannot later be corrected. As a result, a valuable invention may remain unprotected, and the opportunity for protection effectively wasted.
We also see cases where an application is first prepared using AI and only then submitted to a patent attorney for “review.” In practice, correcting a poorly drafted application is often significantly more complex and costly than preparing it properly from the outset.
Kristiina Kreek-Truuts, Senior Examiner at the Patent Office, has observed the same trend in her practice:“We have encountered certain applications where it may be suspected that they were not drafted by a human, but that artificial intelligence was most likely used. Unfortunately, these applications stand out precisely because of features that are generally not found — or at least not to such an extent — in human-drafted applications. For example, they tend to be unreasonably long, unfocused in content, and contain peculiar errors.
We have received very extensive applications (for example, exceeding 100 pages) describing multiple different problems within a single filing, yet from the entirety of the text it is very difficult to identify a concrete invention.
We have also observed characteristic deficiencies in such applications. For instance, while prior art is formally described, upon review it turns out that the cited documents either do not exist or that the reference actually points to an entirely different and unrelated document.
In both situations, conducting substantive examination becomes difficult: in the first case, it is unclear what protection is actually being sought; in the second case, the content of the application does not support the invention it purports to protect. Moreover, such applications fail to comply with the applicable formal and substantive requirements.
In the case of very poorly drafted applications, it is unfortunately highly unlikely that they will ultimately result in the grant of a patent or a utility model.”
Artificial intelligence can be a useful assistant in preparing a patent application, but it does not replace the experience or professional responsibility of a patent attorney. In patent matters, a single incorrect step may be irreversible — and the cost is often the permanent loss of legal protection.
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