AI And Inventive Step: Does Machine-Generated Mean Obvious?

Examining the impact of artificial intelligence on patentability at the EPO

One question we are now hearing regularly is whether the use of AI to generate inventions, particularly in biotech and pharma, risks undermining inventive step. Put simply: if AI can produce a solution, does that make it obvious?

In our recent webinar, we explored this question through the lens of the EPO’s established problem-solution approach. Under that framework, the EPO assesses inventive step by asking what the notional skilled person would have done in view of the prior art. This “would, not could” distinction remains central to the assessment of inventiveness, and is particularly important in the context of AI-assisted inventions: would the skilled person have used AI in the first place? And would they have selected the claimed solution even if they had used AI?