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AI is great isn't it? A couple of prompts and it will produce an impressive-looking document, nicely laid out and written clearly and grammatically. Great for getting your point across. And it's really easy, too – once you've written your first draft, you can upload it to one of a number of free online services and they will return it to you in a matter of minutes. Great for creating a better first impression with professional advisors.
Please take care, though. Doing this with an invention description prior to sending it to your patent attorney could be disastrous. We've known for a while that the terms of service of (at least) the free AI tools do not promise confiden
tiality, so have assumed that this should be avoided. However, in the UK we now have judicial authority for this, in the form of Munir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKUT 81 (IAC).
I know, immigration cases are not my usual subject. However, this one is relevant despite not being an IP case. It was an immigration appeal in which the lawyer came to the Tribunal's attention after including an AI hallucination in his legal arguments, referring to an non-existent case in his grounds of appeal. Further investigation revealed that he had submitted client-confidential material into ChatGPT to summarise it. The Tribunal was quite clear on the issue:
We also observe that to put client letters and decision letters from the Home Office into an open source AI tool, such as ChatGPT, is to place this information on the internet in the public domain, and thus to breach client confidentiality and waive legal privilege...
Note that the AI's terms of service are not the determining factor – it is that the AI tool is an open-source one. The Tribunal differentiated this from closed source AI tools, such as Microsoft Copilot, which do not place information in the public domain.
The advice is very clear, therefore. In preparing documentation for a new invention and when discussing it with us, do not use public AI tools. It's not necessary (I'd rather hear about the invention in your own words), and it may be catastrophic. I'll certainly be asking about AI use by the inventors if I'm asked to challenge any patents that date from after ChatGPT arrived on the scene.
This newsletter was 100% human-written; any typos, slips, hallucinations or sycophancy are entirely my fault!
All the best – until next time*
Michael
*translation: "I'll be back..."
