Does Using ChatGPT Count As A Public Disclosure? – Patent

Amazon has warned its employees not to share confidential
information on ChatGPT. This is very sensible advice.

We have also noticed a number of articles discussing whether
ChatGPT could be used to help applicants (or attorneys) with patent
drafting, an idea we would strongly warn against. There is the
knotty issue of whether the ChatGPT system may be trained on
confidential input provided to it, and subsequently disclose that
information in conversations with other users.

However, there is a far more clear reason to avoid inputting
your inventions into ChatGPT. The FAQ for ChatGPT explicitly warns
users not to share any sensitive information in their conversations
with the chatbot, as the content of those conversations may be
reviewed by the system as well as human trainers. The relevant
section of the FAQ is shown below.

Making information available for OpenAI employees to review,
regardless of whether they do or do not review it, is likely to be
considered a public disclosure, as these employees have not entered
a confidentiality agreement with the user regarding the invention.
While there are some limited grace periods in some countries,
generally, a public disclosure of this nature will mean that the
invention is no longer eligible for patent protection.

It almost seems inevitable that Large Language Models (or their
successors) will have a profound impact on almost all areas of
life, including Intellectual Property. At the moment the hype is
around ChatGPT in particular, but for now at least, we would
strongly discourage using ChatGPT to help draft patent
applications.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.

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