While advances in search technology have provided government employees with more powerful search tools, the dramatic growth of multi-modal data in all its forms has made search, and the ability to find the right information in petabytes of datasets more challenging than ever.

That was the challenge the United States Patent and Trademark Office and its patent examiners were facing, setting the stage for taking a new approach to search, enabled by advanced AI technologies. 

In a strategic partnership with Accenture Federal Services and Google Cloud, USPTO has developed and implemented a comprehensive system to refine its search mechanisms. This initiative has been about upgrading the traditional examination protocols, providing examiners with new, swift and precise search capabilities that respond to the complexity and scale of modern innovations.

At Google Cloud Next ’24, Jonathan Horner, supervisory patent IT specialist at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Ian Wetherbee, software engineer at Google, joined Anna Hoffman, USPTO lead at Accenture Federal Services, on stage to discuss the agency’s ambitious efforts to leverage AI.  

The USPTO’s initiative highlights a broader challenge public agencies face in reviewing mountains of documents, artifacts and existing application decisions—and identifying where else in the world similar work may be underway and what’s verifiable. Until recently, Generative AI platforms had limited ability to provide grounded or verifiably sourced content in real time from the Internet.

“One of the things we recently announced is Grounding with Google Search,” said Katharyn White, head of public sector marketing for Google Cloud in a podcast from Google Cloud Next.

“Grounded means we know the source that the AI is using to come up with the answer. It’s grounded in a data source that you can check and ensure that is giving you the results that you want. And we’re making that easier.” 

For the USPTO, the need for advanced search capabilities meant first tackling its internal data retrieval and analytics capabilities.

Horner detailed the constitutional roots of patent law and the monumental task of examining each application against all human knowledge. “That’s a lot of information to go through… You’re looking for a needle in a stack of other needles,” Horner said, explaining the enormity of their challenge.

Traditionally, patent examiners relied on Boolean search techniques. However, with the exponential increase in information, these tools became increasingly inadequate for maintaining the high standards required for U.S. patents, said Horner. To address this, the USPTO has turned to AI, deploying tools in production that are not only efficient but also explainable, respecting the office’s duty to the public and applicants.

Hoffman discussed the journey starting in 2019 with a small prototype aimed to demonstrate that AI could meet these challenges. She mentioned conducting dozens of interviews and workshops, deploying a modern Google infrastructure and launching a prototype within three months—a pace unheard of in federal government operations. The prototype focused on finding prior art — evidence that an invention might already exist — that examiners might likely have missed otherwise.  The pilot paved the way for production features like showing “more like this” documents, enabling examiners to find similar documents more effectively.

“This feature became used by examiners immediately, which allowed us to run with a much bigger and more robust AI user interface directly similar to the examiner search system called Similarity Search,” Hoffman added. 

Google’s Wetherbee emphasized the necessity of “supporting the full Boolean search syntax as the model’s input.” A robust data collection process involved over a million data points from human raters and a pattern corpus of over 170 million documents. 

“There are hundreds of millions of citations inside patterns. It’s a huge corpus of over two terabytes of text content…We were able to process all of this human-rated data and the pattern data using Google infrastructure and turn that into training data to train our models,” said Wetherbee. 

Horner reiterated that despite technological advancements, the examiner is “still in the driver’s seat. All of these tools are based on an examiner’s ability to guide the AI towards what it is looking for, and that’s very important to us.” It’s a symbiotic relationship where AI extends the reach of human capability rather than replacing it.

Adopting these AI tools signifies a broader shift within the federal landscape—embracing cutting-edge technology to ensure accuracy and efficiency in governmental functions. It also poses an example for other federal agencies that are considering a similar path toward digital transformation.

Learn more about how Google Public Sector can help your organization “Kickstart your generative AI journey.”

This article was produced by Scoop News Group and sponsored by Google Public Sector. Google Public Sector is an underwriter of AI Week.

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In a notice posted Thursday in the Federal Register, the USPTO issued guidance focused on full and accurate disclosures from individuals working with AI as it relates to agency processes, as well as risk mitigation and special care when AI is used “in connection with USPTO practice.” While the agency does not currently require individuals presenting information to the USPTO to disclose AI usage in the drafting of any paper presented to the agency, it states that “applicants and practitioners should be mindful of their duty of disclosure.”

The agency said confidentiality and national security considerations should be kept in mind while using AI for applications, as well as good faith practices and a reminder to innovators and entrepreneurs that there is a threat of fraud at the intersection of AI and USPTO’s processes. USPTO noted that the guidance is “not meant to be exhaustive” while emphasizing that the notice serves primarily as a reminder of required compliance with existing precedents, laws and regulations.

“These tools have the potential to lower the barriers and costs of practicing before the office as well as helping law practitioners offer services to their clients with improved quality and efficiency,” the notice states. “As the use of AI continues to grow in the [intellectual property] community, it is essential to address the legal and ethical considerations that arise with the use of these technologies.”

Thursday’s posting follows USPTO’s existing rule regarding “candor and good faith,” which each individual is responsible for abiding by in their interactions with the office. The agency describes the responsibility in the filing as disclosing all information known to an individual about a material’s patentability, filing petitions to the office’s director and all other dealings with a patent examiner. 

USPTO pointed to word processing software and other computer tools that have generative AI capabilities. Documents that were drafted either entirely or with the assistance of gen AI tools have to be reviewed and verified to ensure accuracy and the absence of any hallucinations or omissions of information, according to the notice. 

USPTO recently announced its intent to award approximately $70 million to an industry partner for an AI patent search tool, along with further guidance on how the agency is approaching inventorship with the consideration of how AI can play a “greater role in the innovation process.”

Jamie Holcomb, USPTO’s chief information officer, said in an interview with FedScoop on Wednesday that the agency currently has three internal AI use cases that include classification, search and fraud detection in operation. Holcomb said that if the agency sees a proven AI use “in the small,” it will move to see if the tool is scalable. 

“You got to know the culture of your agency in order to apply the right tool set,” Holcomb said. “You should go slow if you have a more traditional and conservative culture, not risk takers, or go quickly if you have somebody who’s willing to take that risk. But remember: don’t fail big, fail small.”

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said this week that it intends to award an estimated $70 million contract to Accenture Federal Services for its Patent Search Artificial Intelligence capabilities.

The notice of intent described the need for a contractor to provide a “full system development effort” to continue maintenance for PSAI capabilities, and “provide new enhancements” for the component. USPTO anticipates negotiating and awarding this responsibility to AFS by April 1.

The office currently has an AI-based search tool for its Patents End-to-End (PE2E) suite to leverage AI for “prior art” searches, a tool that examiners use to assess the novelty of an invention, of which PSAI is a component.

“In an effort to modernize the Patents Automated Information Systems, the USPTO launched PE2E, a single web-based system that provides examiners with a unified and robust set of tools to use in the examination process,” the USPTO statement about PE2E states. “PE2E Search is a system within PE2E that presents a modern interface design and introduces new tools and features, such as AI search capabilities.”

USPTO in August announced that it was seeking information concerning AI deployment capabilities to “improve searches for ‘prior art’ during the patent process,” FedScoop previously reported.

USPTO did not respond to a request for comment. AFS declined to comment.

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The examination guidance, published for public inspection Monday on the Federal Register, is aimed at providing clarity to agency personnel and stakeholders on how it will analyze inventorship “as AI systems, including generative AI, play a greater role in the innovation process.”

“This guidance explains that while AI-assisted inventions are not categorically unpatentable, the inventorship analysis should focus on human contributions, as patents function to incentivize and reward human ingenuity,” the USPTO said in the Federal Register posting.

The increasing prevalence of AI has prompted questions about how use of the technology, which has the potential to speed up innovation, will be treated when it comes to patents. While current patent law requires human inventors, academics have suggested ways to allow AI inventions to move forward in the patent process. 

Under the guidance, the agency outlines several guiding principles for identifying human contributions to an invention, acknowledging that doing so “may be difficult to ascertain, and there is no bright-line test.” Among those principles, the guidance says a human’s use of AI in the invention process doesn’t mean they can’t be considered an inventor, but only presenting an issue to an AI system may not be enough to be considered an inventor or joint inventor.

The guidance further outlines its applicability to the patent process, including disclosures and naming inventors. The agency will be now seeking comments on the guidance over the next three months.

Before issuing the guidance, the agency sought input from the public on AI inventions through comments and listening sessions. During that process, USPTO said “numerous commenters expressly agreed that the USPTO should provide guidance regarding inventorship and the patentability of AI assisted inventions.” Publishing such guidance was among the actions outlined in President Joe Biden’s October executive order on AI.

In a Monday blog post, Undersecretary of Commerce and Intellectual Property and USPTO Director Kathi Vidal noted the patent system’s origins as a way to “incentivize and protect human ingenuity” and the “sharing of ideas and solutions so that others may build on them,” while also stressing the need for balance.

“The right balance must be struck between awarding patent protection to promote human ingenuity and investment for AI-assisted inventions while not unnecessarily locking up innovation for future developments,” Vidal said. “To that end, the guidance provides that patent protection may be sought for inventions in which a human provided a significant contribution to the invention.”

Caroline Nihill contributed to this article.

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Jamie Holcombe, chief information officer in the patent office, said that when it comes to adoption of emerging technologies like AI, leadership within the federal government needs to change the culture and incentive structure of the workforce.

“Culture, culture, culture. I don’t care about the tech. We can solve it. We prove that you can. But it’s the culture, if they’re willing to receive [new tech]. Unless there’s a burning platform, a lot of people will say, ‘I’ll [have] somebody else do it, I’ll figure it out later,’” Holcombe said during the Google Public Sector Forum hosted by Scoop News Group in Washington, D.C.

“Especially with government bureaucracy, we have so many people that are just incentivized to sit there and punch their card, turn the paper or, you know, sign this and put it over here, I did my job,” he added. “We need to change and challenge the status quo, we need to get a sense of urgency and incentive for our government workers.”

The USPTO in 2021 sent its top engineers to Google to be certified in TensorFlow and develop neural network feedback loops for patent examiners to rate algorithms, as well as to apply machine learning and AI to patent classification, search and quality.

Holcombe was highly critical of the federal government’s approach to innovation and long-term modernization during the Google forum.

“Our budgeting process is stupid. Our procurement is stupid. Everything we do in the government is pretty stupid, when you compare it to the commercial world, right?” Holcombe said. “There’s so many lessons that no one is willing to take. Who in their right mind would run a commercial enterprise or operation using a budget that was conceived three years ago?”

He also highlighted key differences between how the federal government and the private sector operate when it comes to emerging technologies like AI.

“If we ran our government like we ran Silicon Valley, we’d be much more efficient,” Holcombe said. “Can you imagine the Silicon Valley guy saying, ‘Wait a second, I have to fill all my compliance things before I prove my product works in the marketplace? What are you freaking kidding me?’” 

Google Public Sector Managing Director Aaron Weis pushed back on Holcombe regarding government compliance.

“We do compliance for the government, so we actually have to get all our Google products accredited,” Weis said. “So we’re gonna fill out all the government’s compliance forms, but we might use AI to do it now.”

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While the current USPTO fax system, RightFax, has only had one outage in 18 years, the system remains at risk for a larger disruption that could get in the way of the office’s handling of public customer document submissions, the patent agency said in a request for information this week. The agency is now searching for information regarding an accessible cloud fax solution that is capable of withstanding “regional catastrophic disruption.”

While the office is not looking to completely retire the system it currently employs, the RFI states that new services should support the effort to minimize existing direct inward dialing systems. 

The request for information specifically seeks a FedRAMP-authorized and cloud-based solution that would allow employees, with authorized access, to “process Patent, Trademark, Payment and other business fax documents without disruption.” Available solutions should also offer support in other areas that interact well with existing software systems. 

“USPTO also desires the ability to employ content-based document routing to deliver fax and other document sources without compromising the confidentiality, availability and integrity of sensitive customer data … made available to only those USPTO personnel authorized to process it,” the notice states. 

The office stresses that it’d like to keep or improve the current system, which has other features like messaging integrations and supports its use of Microsoft applications.

USPTO, however, is prioritizing the search for a cloud-based solution for faxed documents that handles private information appropriately and is compliant with federal standards for technology. 

“FedRAMP is preferred; however, an alternate solution that meets the FedRAMP/Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) requirement can be provided meeting moderate controls or higher, attending NIST standards and policies governing…other federal mandates…, and respond rapidly to applicable CISA cyber alerts,” the notice states. 

The office will accept responses for information regarding an available cloud-based service until Oct. 23.

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Prior art searches, which collect public information that’s used to assess the novelty of an invention, are an important part of the patent examination process and the USPTO‘s mission “to issue reliable patent rights,” the agency said in a document part of a recent request for information on SAM.gov.

“However, the exponential growth of prior art and tremendous pace of technological innovation make it increasingly more difficult to quickly discover the most relevant prior art,” the agency said.

The solicitation specifically seeks information on solutions that would leverage technologies like AI and machine learning to “expand, rank and sort the results of existing patent search systems so that prior art that might have otherwise not been present in or near the top of a list of search results is made readily available to examiners.” 

The request for information comes as interest in the nascent technology has boomed with the popularity of tools like ChatGPT. The solicitation is the latest example of that interest extending to the federal government and comes as Congress and the White House pursue guardrails for AI.

According to the solicitation, USPTO has already been developing and implementing AI, including capabilities for AI-based patent searches and “a roadmap for future development.” But the agency said it recognizes adding more advanced technology “offers unique opportunities to leapfrog forward to further enhance patent search capabilities and further strengthen the patent system.”

The agency is seeking responses by Sept. 11. USPTO and the Department of Commerce didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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The trademark office said the data leak affected about 3% of the total number of trademark applicants filed during the three-year period and that the issue was fully fixed on April 1, without any data having been misused. 

“Upon discovery, the USPTO reported the data exposure to the Department’s Senior Agency Official for Privacy and it’s Enterprise Security Operations Center, which in turn reported the exposure to the Department of Homeland Security. As you are aware, the USPTO also notified affected parties of the exposure,” a USPTO spokesperson emailed FedScoop.

“The USPTO has no reason to believe that the data has been misused,” the spokesperson added.

U.S. law requires trademark applicants to include their private address when submitting an application in order to combat fraudulent trademark filings.

The trademark office said in a notice sent to all those impacted by the data leak that by April 1 the issue had been fully fixed by properly masking all of the private addresses and correcting all system vulnerabilities found.

The trademark office said that in February it discovered that private domicile addresses that should have been hidden from public view appeared in records retrieved through some application programming interfaces (APIs) of the Trademark Status and Document Review system (TSDR). The APIs are used in apps by both agency staff and trademark filers to access the TSDR system for checking the status of pending and registered trademarks.

Some private addresses also appeared on the bulk data portal of the USPTO website.

The trademark office highlighted that as a federal government agency, the USPTO does not have the same reporting requirements as a private company or a state or local agency would and does have a process whereby those who do not want their address to be shown publicly can request that it is not made public or they can waive the requirement altogether.

Details of the USPTO leak were first reported by TechCrunch.

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The proposed program is called the Track Three Pilot Program and would allow “micro entity” applicants — that status is governed by federal rules — to take a 30-month period before paying search or examination fees, provided they meet certain requirements. Applicants could also receive a “obtain a pre-examination search report” before paying an examination fee.

“The USPTO recognizes that under-resourced applicants may need a low-cost option with minimal requirements to allow them additional time for commercialization efforts and to ascertain the value of their inventions,” explained Katherine Vidal, the undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and the director USPTO  in a post shared to the Federal Register on Friday. 

The pre-examination search report option that the office is considering could involve artificial intelligence. Recently, USPTO incorporated an AI-enhanced tool —which was trained on past patent data —  that allows examiners to analyze how similar an application is to previously-filed domestic and foreign patent documents. Now, the office is considering whether the search results produced by that AI system should be included in a pre-examination report.

The goal, the federal register post said, is “to provide applicants with additional information as they consider potential commercialization and the value of their invention.”

The move comes as the office looks to use AI to accelerate the patent application process. The comment period closes on July 25. 

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USPTO’s Office of the Chief Information Officer seeks a red-team vendor that can simulate attacks on its networks “utilizing current threat actor methods and resources to evaluate mitigation effectiveness all the way up to Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), Nation State (NS), and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) threat actors,” according to a request for information the agency issued this week.

“[T]he United States Patent & Trademark Office faces some of the most advanced and persistent threat actors in the world,” the RFI says. “Therefore, USPTO is seeking market research information about partners with the necessary capabilities, experience, people, technology, and drive to join our team as a partner in helping to defend against this ever-evolving challenge.”

The Patent Office plans to use what it calls the alternative competition method under its agency acquisition guidelines. As such, the agency is searching for large and small businesses that can meet its pen-testing needs, and if it deems there is an adequate market, it will create a pool of eligible vendors and invite them to bid for the contract.

Because of the sensitivity of the work, USPTO will limit competition of the contract to only domestic U.S. companies. “For security purposes, due to the sensitive nature of the materials, the RTPTS RFI materials shall be disseminated only to verified domestic United States of America contract entities (NO-FORN) only after execution of the attached Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) by responding contract entities,” the RFI says.

After companies attest that they are U.S.-based by Jan. 11, they will be sent a more thorough package of RFI materials through which they can detail their services and past performance.

This RFI comes as Patent Office CIO Jamie Holcombe is pursuing a sweeping move to a zero-trust security architecture. In November, Holcombe told FedScoop his office is considering the adoption of encryption-in-use technology to protect data as it builds out its zero-trust security architecture.

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