A new Sedona Conference Journal article discusses how AI is testing the limits of the IP legal regimes & is the precursor for a new working group.

The article (Testing the Limits of the IP Legal Regimes: The Unique Challenges of Artificial Intelligence, available here) was written by Jim W. Ko and former Chief Judge Paul R. Michel of the Federal Circuit. The article will be included in The Sedona Conference Journal Volume 25, Number 1, to be published later this month.

An earlier draft of the article was presented in June at The Sedona Conference on AI and the Law as a means of stimulating a broad conversation about the need for balanced, comprehensive law and policy as it relates to the intersection of artificial intelligence and intellectual property. Among the topic the revised paper addresses in detail are:

• Should GenAI-assisted works of authorship or inventions be eligible for copyright or patent protections, and if so, when?
• Should GenAI-assisted software code be eligible for copyright protection?
• Should the patentability of inventions be recalibrated given the impact of the proliferation of AI on prior art and the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art?
• Should the use of public GenAI in a company’s product development lifecycle presumptively constitute public disclosure invalidating patent or trade secret rights?
• Should individuals have rights against the use of GenAI to create deepfakes appropriating their identities?
• Are copyrighted works protected from being used in training generative AI models? If not, should they be?

The issues raised in the paper are among those that will serve as starting points for a forthcoming Sedona Conference Working Group 13 on AI and the Law, with the mission of drafting consensus, nonpartisan commentaries that balance the rights and interests of the diverse stakeholders in the copyright, patent, and trade secret realms, as well as coordinating the AI-related commentaries of existing Sedona Conference Working Groups in the areas of eDiscovery, information governance, cross-border data transfer, cybersecurity, data privacy, and patent damages and remedies.

Fair warning: it’s a 154(!) page “article” – albeit, written in the Sedona style with wide margins, so it sounds larger than it is. Regardless, it’s an important topic and it’s about time the Sedona Conference created a working group on AI and the law.

So, what do you think? Do you agree that AI is testing the limits of the IP legal regimes? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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