Jamie Holcombe, chief information officer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), said machine learning algorithms have helped patent examiners speed up the process of searching concepts and gather in one place all the relevant prior art they need, FedScoop reported Wednesday.
“The ability to search, especially the big datasets, gets me so excited,” Holcombe said Tuesday during an American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council event. “Because that means we can unleash that power to anybody who can get on a computer and access the net.”
He also discussed USPTO’s process for issuing an authority to operate if the agency intends to adopt a technology that lacks authorization but has the potential to advance modernization.
“We’re not exposing everything to it,” Holcombe said. “But I’m giving it enough time to grow to the point where it can comply with the minimum amount of bureaucracy that it has to comply with.”
