| Former patent examiner here. There have been quite a few patent drafting softwares over the years. They seem to do a reasonable job guiding someone through the process of writing the patent application. But search and submission are not automated. Here are some softwares that are still currently on the market: https://www.ipwatchdog.com/patent/invent-patent-system/ https://www.neustelsoftware.com/patentwizard/ http://www.lanaconsult.com/products.htm#AutoPat AI-based patent search approaches don't work that well at the moment. I wrote about this before on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31216394 AI-based patent search seems to look at citations (which is somewhat worthless as I'll look at citations anyway) and have some measure of text-based similarity. In my experience it does a poor job when the terminology varies. There was no substitute for making a search string containing a lot of synonyms. I think AI-based patent search could see a lot of improvement in the future if it simply started looking at the drawings. As a "mechanical" examiner, many of the applications I worked on were most effectively searched by flipping through patent drawings. Sometimes the prior art I'd use to reject an application would have drawings that are remarkably similar to those of the application I'm examining. But other times (particularly involving flow or electrical circuits), the drawing is equivalent in some sense but arranged differently. A more advanced AI/ML approach is needed for those. |