About
The Opportunity
Dramatic advances in the power of AI, machine learning, and natural language processing techniques present a unique opportunity to reshape the patent field. The amount of text collectively processed due to the patent system is staggering. Tens of millions of patents and patent applications exist worldwide. Each week over ten thousand new patent applications are filed in the US alone. These documents must be searched and interpreted by patent offices, patent applicants, companies in patent-heavy industries, and the public.
State-of-the-art AI technologies can significantly reduce the processing burden for the companies and patent offices of the world. AI can also make patents into more effective sources of technical information and learning.
Our Approach
Although next-generation patent analysis has tremendous potential for societal impact, there are obstacles to implementing this vision. The patent system is highly complex and has specialized tasks, objectives, and challenges. Our research seeks to close the gap between AI capabilities and the particular needs of the patent system. Patent-specific AI algorithms will vastly improve performance and productivity for participants in the patent field.
Designing AI algorithms tailored to patent-related tasks requires expertise in both AI technology and patents. CAPA combines CMU’s world class capabilities in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing with deep expertise in patent law, practice, and policy.
CAPA’s strength is our understanding of the special structure, knowledge, and drafting strategies that underlie the text of patents, Office Actions, PTAB opinions, and other documents. Leveraging this understanding yields text processing and information extraction that outperforms domain-agnostic AI techniques.
Our mission allows us to tackle more than better patent searching. We are taking on the more ambitious tasks of extracting knowledge and data used for legal, technical, policy, and business decision making.