The American regulator has figured out how to issue patents for inventions involving AI: the human contribution must be substantial. And other news from our digest: trials by four-legged robots, mirror images of industrial samples and the new Tinkoff logo.

AI, as before, is not an inventor, but it can prevent a person from becoming one

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released the official guide to examining patent applications where artificial intelligence was involved in the creation of the invention.

The cornerstone principle has been preserved: the author of the invention cannot be a neural network or another AI product. They cannot be anyone except a living person, because patents as a phenomenon were invented to stimulate engineering creativity and innovation and protect their results.

However, in the case of using II, the inventor can obtain a patent only if he made a “substantial contribution” to the invention. The determination of the materiality of the contribution has not yet been formalized and will probably be carried out individually in each disputed case. It may be necessary to deal with who and how the II-model was taught, and with the extent to which the prompt corresponded to the results obtained, and what efforts the inventor made.

If a person simply formulated a problem and set a task for AI, this may not be enough for an invention. Applicants for patents will have to explain what work they have done. It will also be mandatory to disclose the fact that AI was used in the process of the invention.

The first went: Apple received a patent for VisionPro

This week, Apple reached patenting the design in the USA (in our country it is called a patent for an industrial design) of the Vision Pro headset. The creators of the design in the patent are 27 employees of the corporation, including the legendary Jony Ive, who left the company in 2019 (now he works on the design of Ferrari).

The number of technology patents in the US, Europe and Hong Kong related to VisionPro is smooth passes from dozens to hundreds (especially if you add security documents related to smart glasses).

Meanwhile, the American law firm Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox has released an analysis of important court decisions of the US International Trade Commission for 2023. In the section devoted to patents for industrial designs, specified, that for these patents the Commission issues adjustment provisions much more often than for “classic” invention patents. Accurately describing the visually perceived structure, layout or appearance of the patentable sample turned out to be not so easy.

In particular, claims arose against companies that patented the sample, and also produced and used its mirror image. An example of such a collision would be the Hyundai headlight patent. The filing described either a driver-side headlight or a passenger-side headlight, but the board ultimately concluded that the corresponding headlight on the other side, despite being a mirror, was thereby protected by the patent. Because “an ordinary observer would consider his visual impressions of the patented design and the mirror image of the design to be substantially similar.”

Boston Dynamics has added four more patents to its lawsuit against the creator of killer robot dogs

Boston Dynamics is famous for its biomorphic works filed another lawsuit to Ghost Robotics Corp, which has been pursuing for some time for infringing patents on technology for the development of four-legged unmanned ground vehicles. Two more models allegedly infringe four more patents.

These are models Vision 60a military robot dog with a remote-controlled gun equipped with a night vision device on its back, and Spirit 40a small and fast robot for search and rescue work.

The disputed patents relate to control technologies, processing data from sensors, planning the movements of robots, which allows them to move on different surfaces and adapt to different situations.

A preliminary 2022 lawsuit alleging infringement of seven patents will be tried by a jury in late February 2025.

AviaGames lost a patent lawsuit and will now sue for bots

Developer of mobile games and gaming platform AviaGames lost Las Vegas competitor Skillz is being sued in California. The latter accused AviaGames of infringing patents on its platform for developing real-time multiplayer games. The court found that the security deed was not only breached, but willfully breached, and roughly tripled the amount of compensation originally sought.

AviaGames will now pay almost $43 million. Just a few months before, the company received venture capital investment in the framework of another round in the amount of $40 million. But this may not be enough to compensate for the lost lawsuits: AviaGames is now facing a class action lawsuit from users.

AviaGames specializes in gambling. In November 2023, players presented claims to the company in the fact that it uses bots in games, where it is meant to compete only with live users, and it is not based on randomness, but on skills. In AviaGames games, you can win money or points that were exchanged for them.

This review is not over yet, although it is already over were postponed hearing in the case against Skillz. The latter claim that the process of patent infringement started back in 2016, when AviaGames launched the game on their platform. The game failed, but AviaGames copied the technology of the platform.

Skillz also accused AviaGames in the use of bots. The Las Vegas-based startup only allows people to play with people, resulting in a player waiting up to 15 minutes for an opponent to be matched. AviaGames places bots on players so they don’t have to wait, which creates an unfair competitive advantage.

Bank “Tinkoff” radically simplified the logo

Tinkoff changed the logo — instead of a complex-shaped coat of arms with a pattern inside the bank, there is now a yellow shield with the letter T. The new logo has already become part of the advertising campaign “Country and Sun. Continuation”, and also spawned a lot of jokes about taxis and unfinished checkers in social networks.

The key idea of ​​our image communication remains unchanged: such a unique bank as “Tinkoff” could only appear in a unique country – the largest country in the world, on which the sun never sets.

Mykhailo Gorbuntsov, Media Director of Tinkoff Bank

Useful from Online Patent:

→ What is the Register of domestic software?

→ Free online search of Rospatent and Madrid System databases (available after registration).

→ Can a foreign company enter its program into the Register of domestic software?

→ How IT companies can maintain zero VAT and enter the Register of domestic software

→ How to patent a technology?