"At present, the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property rights is becoming increasingly deep, and intellectual property rights play a key role in promoting the development of responsible artificial intelligence." At the 2025 China Intellectual Property Protection High-level Forum held recently, Kenichiro Natsume, the Assistant Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, said.

　　The theme of this forum is "Opportunities and Challenges: Intellectual Property Governance in the Background of Artificial Intelligence". Experts and scholars from the field of intellectual property, representatives of Chinese and foreign innovative enterprises gathered to discuss this topic in depth.

　　Intellectual property provides institutional and technical support for the development of artificial intelligence. According to a report from the World Intellectual Property Organization, China has now become the largest owner of artificial intelligence patents in the world, accounting for as high as 61%, which provides strong guarantees for the development of my country's artificial intelligence industry. Kenichiro Natsume said that more than half of the main holders of generative artificial intelligence patents come from China, and China has become an important participant in intellectual property rights in the field of generative artificial intelligence.

　　Previously, the State Intellectual Property Office revised the "Patent Review Guidelines" and issued the "Guidelines for Applications for Inventions and Patents Related Artificial Intelligence", which clarified that inventions and creations participated in artificial intelligence can apply for patent protection, and improved the "creative" review standards for artificial intelligence patents.

　　Artificial intelligence has also promoted the innovation of the intellectual property system and the improvement of governance efficiency. A reporter from Science and Technology Daily learned from the forum that my country has applied AI models to the field of intellectual property protection, and continues to promote real-time monitoring, online identification, and source traceability of infringement, so as to achieve integrated online and offline protection; carry out patent screening of universities and research institutions, form a convertible patent resource library, helping universities and research institutions accurately connect with enterprises, and effectively solve problems such as difficulty in converting patents in universities and research institutions and difficulty in obtaining technology in small and medium-sized enterprises.

　　It cannot be ignored that the development of artificial intelligence technology has also brought many challenges to intellectual property protection. Wu Handong, former president of Central South University of Finance and Economics, analyzed that in literary and artistic creation, intelligent machines have developed from assisted creation to cooperative creation, and can even compose, write poetry, and draw like human artists; in the field of technological invention and creation, artificial intelligence may independently complete inventions in the future. This has triggered a discussion of subjectivity in artificial intelligence, namely whether intelligent robots can be viewed as authors and how to define the rights, obligations and responsibilities of their creation and invention results. "This brings challenges to our traditional patent rights system," said Wu Handong.

　　Wu Handong also believes that the copyrightability of artificial intelligence products is also controversial. The US court emphasized that every step from conception and creation to completion of AI works should be intervened by human authors. Chinese courts have adopted a relatively open judging stance. As long as human authors make necessary interventions in the AI ​​creation process, their works can be regarded as copyrighted works.

　　In this regard, Wu Handong suggested that the legal values ​​of the intellectual property system should be reconstructed, and the value of security and innovation should be emphasized, and the security of human society should be guaranteed by setting the exclusion areas of works and patents; the legal policy stance of the intellectual property system should be clarified or adjusted, and the intellectual property management and adjudicator bodies should be given certain space for interpretation on the basis of not easily shake the existing legal framework; the legal normative principles of the intellectual property system should be improved, the machine authors and machine inventions should be recognized in a conditional manner, and artificial intelligence products should be included in the scope of the object, but the humanistic principle should always be adhered to.

　　"We have entered the era of artificial intelligence. To cope with the legal challenges brought by this requires not only scientific wisdom, but also institutional rationality." Wu Handong said.

　　Shen Changyu, director of the State Intellectual Property Administration, said that the bureau will continue to promote innovation in the intellectual property system related to artificial intelligence, accelerate the establishment of intellectual property protection rules for new fields and new business forms such as artificial intelligence big data, and provide more powerful legal guarantees for the development of artificial intelligence technology.

　　The State Intellectual Property Administration will improve the level of protection of intellectual property rights in artificial intelligence, improve the work system for intellectual property support key core technologies, increase the on-demand review services for intellectual property rights in the field of artificial intelligence, especially patent applications, and promote more patents in the field of artificial intelligence from laboratories to industrial chains. (Reporter Cao Xiuying)

[Editor in charge: Zhu Jiaqi]