Grigory Ivliev, President of the Eurasian Patent Office, announced it at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum session on the legal regulation of artificial intelligence (AI).

The participants noted that the development of AI technologies is now a key factor for maintaining competitiveness, comparable to nuclear capacity.

Grigory Ivliev said that patenting of AI inventions remains in high demand in Russia. SBER and Yandex are the leaders in this field. The increase in demand for such patents in the Eurasian space started in 2017. The developers need to protect their advanced technologies.

What is the process for patenting AI-related technical solutions? Grigory Ivliev noted that the world’s leading patent offices had already developed an examination methodology. The basic norms of patent laws do not recognize software, mathematical methods, algorithms and computer programs as inventions as such. At the same time, the protection of technical solutions that include them as one of their elements is not so unambiguous.

Grigory Ivliev stated that the EAPO experience in this field coincided with the approaches of the world’s top five patent offices (IP5). Technical solutions can be protected when the AI has functions that make a technical contribution to the state of the art.

“We can say that the EAPO has a rather loyal approach to patenting AI inventions. And we see that exactly such a methodology is in demand in the IT sector. The priority goal is to stimulate development and implementation and contribute to the citizens’ welfare and quality of life. Our practice is fully in line with this approach,” Grigory Ivliev said.