New executive order puts the Office's artificial intelligence inventorship and eligibility guidance under review

2025-01-23US Policy

Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," signed Jan. 23, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 8741 (Jan. 31, 2025), Section 5, following the revocation of Executive Order 14110 by Executive Order 14148 of January 20, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 8237 (Jan. 28, 2025)

Executive Order 14179, signed three days after Executive Order 14148 revoked Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023, states a policy of sustaining and enhancing American global dominance in artificial intelligence to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness and national security. Section 4 directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to develop an action plan within 180 days. Section 5(a) directs those officials to review immediately "all policies, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions" taken under the revoked order and to identify those "inconsistent with, or present obstacles to" the new policy; agency heads are then to "suspend, revise, or rescind such actions, or propose suspending, revising, or rescinding such actions," as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, granting exemptions in the meantime. Section 5(b) gives the Office of Management and Budget 60 days to revise its memoranda M-24-10 and M-24-18. Two documents of the United States Patent and Trademark Office were issued under the revoked order: the February 13, 2024 Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions, which cites section 5.2(c)(i), and the July 17, 2024 eligibility update, issued under section 5.2(c)(ii). The new order names neither document and withdraws no guidance itself.

What it changesUntil the Office acts, both documents remain the guidance examiners apply, and nothing in a filing needs to change tomorrow. What changes is how much weight a prosecution file should rest on them. In eligibility responses, cite Examples 47 through 49 alongside the Federal Circuit decisions the update relies on, so the argument survives if the examples are revised or withdrawn. For inventorship, keep collecting the record the February 2024 guidance asks for, which human made a significant contribution to the conception of each claim and how the system was used, because that record satisfies the natural-person rule of Thaler v. Vidal under any version of the guidance and is the record any replacement would still need. Watch the action plan for anything on intellectual property: the order itself says nothing about patents, and it sets no date for finishing the review of earlier actions.

More on AI regulation and policy · Inventorship and AI-assisted invention · Eligibility of software and AI claims

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Burbage Law is the practice of Jon Burbage, a registered patent attorney. 342 United States patents have issued from applications he wrote; the full list is on the Patents page. More about Jon Burbage.

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