BarbriSFCourseDetails
  • videocam Live Online with Live Q&A
  • calendar_month January 21, 2026 @ 1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
  • signal_cellular_alt Intermediate
  • card_travel Patent
  • schedule 90 minutes

Patents on AI-Assisted Inventions and New USPTO Guidance: Patentability, Inventorship, Significant Contribution

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About the Course

Introduction

This CLE webinar will cover the patenting of AI-assisted inventions. The panel will examine the recently issued United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) guidance and what is expected for an AI-assisted invention to be patent eligible. The panel will discuss the inventorship analysis and what it may mean to meet the significant contribution requirement. The panel will offer best practices for handling AI-assisted inventions.

Description

In late November 2025, the USPTO released new guidance on inventorship for AI-assisted inventions. This guidance supersedes the guidance provided in February 2024 and clarifies how inventorship should be determined when AI plays a role in the inventive process.

The guidance simplified the inventorship analysis, rejecting application of the Pannu factors to evaluate whether AI contributed to inventorship. While the new guidance maintains that only natural persons can be inventors and AI cannot be listed as an inventor, it is in line with the administration's pro-AI position stated in an earlier executive order.

Counsel must evaluate whether the person involved meets the level of significant contribution and ascertain whether the person's purported significant contribution was made by AI. Patent counsel should keep the new guidance in mind when drafting or challenging AI-assisted patents.

Listen as our experienced panel of patent attorneys examines the new USPTO guidance and patent eligibility of AI-assisted inventions in view of this guidance. The panel will also discuss the inventorship analysis and the significant contribution requirement based on this guidance. The panel will offer suggested best practices for dealing with AI-assisted inventions.

Presented By

Heather Morehouse Ettinger, Ph.D.
Partner
Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP

Ms. Ettinger counsels life sciences clients on a variety of intellectual property matters. She excels at due diligence studies, loss of exclusivity analyses, and agreement drafting in connection with buy- and sell-side transactions and collaborations for her clients, which range from preclinical biotechnology companies to large clinical pharmaceutical companies. Ms. Ettinger regularly advises on Hatch-Waxman issues, biosimilars strategy, and litigation and post-grant proceedings, such as inter partes reviews. She also manages the worldwide prosecution of numerous life sciences patent portfolios. Ms. Ettinger has extensive experience counseling clients in IP matters in areas including gene editing, immunotherapies, regenerative medicine, rare diseases, pharmaceutical formulations, genetically modified plants and seeds, enzyme and other large-molecule technology, and small-molecule chemistry. She routinely works with the firm’s corporate team to counsel international corporations in preparing their intellectual property portfolios for U.S. cross-border securities transactions.

Zachary S. Pratt
Shareholder
Fredrikson & Byron, P.A.

Mr. Pratt primarily focuses on the prosecution and litigation of software, mechanical and medical device patents in addition to trademark registration. He assists technology-driven clients with developing effective strategies to maximize the protection that intellectual property can provide to companies both large and small. Mr. Pratt also provides counsel for companies looking to broaden their IP portfolio to cover both where the client currently is and where the client is looking to go in the future. He has drafted and prosecuted patent applications in a variety of software-focused technology areas, including AI, machine learning algorithms, user interfaces, video coding, VR systems, networks, blockchain and various other applied algorithms dealing with areas including weather detection, medical devices, personal identification, market forecasting, automobile navigation and bug detection. Mr. Pratt also provides assistance with infringement analysis for litigation and due diligence in connection with MA&s.

Credit Information
  • This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.


  • Live Online


    On Demand

Date + Time

  • event

    Wednesday, January 21, 2026

  • schedule

    1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT

I. Patentability of AI-assisted inventions

A. Naming inventors

B. Significant contribution

II. Duties owed to the USPTO

A. Duty of disclosure

B. Duty of reasonable inquiry

III. Priority claims to prior-filed applications

IV. Examples

V. Best practices

The panel will review these and other key issues:

  • What does the new guidance mean for patent counsel seeking protection of inventions that use AI in their innovation?
  • What assistance does the new guidance provide for determining significant contribution?
  • What strategies should counsel employ when evaluating significant contribution?