Supplemental Guidance for
Examination of AI-related Patent Application
On 11 October 2024, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (the “IPOS”) issued supplemental guidance for examination of artificial intelligence (AI)-related patent applications (the “Guidance”). The Guidance expands on the existing guidelines for AI-related inventions, with a particular focus on determining whether an invention constitutes patentable subject matter.
The framework for determining if a patent claim qualifies as an invention has been outlined in the existing guidelines, and the Guidance reinforces the following three key steps: (i) Properly construing the claim, (ii) Identifying the actual contribution made by the claim, and (iii) Determining if the contribution falls solely within non-patentable subject matter. If it does, the claim is not considered an invention. As previously established, the second step (ii) follows the Aerotel/Macrossan test established in Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holdings Ltd & Ors Rev 1 [2007] RPC 7.
The Guidance also provides hypothetical examples of AI applications across various technical fields, where each example includes steps showing how one may assess whether a claim constitutes an invention under Singapore’s Patent Act.