The EPO'S Guidelines And Machine Learning

The EPO has published its Guidelines to provide guidance on various proceedings before the EPO, such as for the search and examination of European patent applications and for the post-grant opposition of European patents. Helpfully, the Guidelines have a section dedicated to the EPO's approach to inventions that involve machine learning or artificial intelligence. So, what do the Guidelines say?

The Guidelines use the terms "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" interchangeably, drawing no distinction between the two.

The main point made in the Guidelines on machine learning algorithms is that the EPO considers such algorithms, when viewed in isolation as abstract processes or as a core technology, to be purely mathematical methods. This is irrespective of the type of algorithm involved, such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, support vector machines, k-means, kernel regression and discriminant analysis. This helps explain why there can often