- within Intellectual Property topic(s)
How should artificial intelligence (AI) assist patent attorneys as they manage highly complex, technical, and business-critical tasks? Questel's Benoit Chevalier explains how building transparency, accuracy, and security into AI solutions is helping boost confidence and productivity across the IP profession.
When many patent professionals began their careers, the idea of having an AI assistant seemed an impossible fiction. Yet, these days, AI has become almost commonplace. From search engines to productivity tools, many of us use AI tools daily on our phones and home computers. Little wonder that IP practitioners are so keen to embrace AI solutions that can also optimize their time-consuming IP tasks at work.
Our2025 Industry Outlook Researchrevealed that 77% of IP professionals were enthusiastic about AI solutions and only 5% expressed reluctance to use them. Over half (58%) said they were actively using AI solutions for IP, citing a positive impact on their work, with the remainder only now starting to experiment "out of curiosity" to measure quality and potential benefits, because "our peers/competitors are using them," or "convinced by suppliers to trial tools."
From Enthusiasm to Adoption
The hype around AI has already translated into viable AI solutions specifically customized for IP law. Our2025 researchrevealed that AI use in our profession is steadily increasing—especially when applied to routine and time-consuming tasks, such as patent search (65%), summarization (58%), and patent translation (46%)—and the tech has a vibrant future in the IP sector.
Nonetheless, the process of adoption is gradual. IP professionals are still digesting and discovering how AI will change IP practice. They are enthusiastic about AI and see its many benefits, but their risk-averse nature is tempering that forward momentum, even as they acknowledge the need to expand their use of AI tools to avoid being left behind by competitors that are leveraging its advantages.
Reasons for Optimism
We know that generative AI is ideally suited to many routine tasks common to IP. It has the potential to increase efficiency and speed, improve turnaround time, and boost productivity. However, there are also potential risks to using AI technologies, as well as ethical considerations to consider and overcome.
As technology evolves, IP AI suppliers must build trust by addressing quality, security, trust, and confidentiality concerns. After all, IP practitioners face heavy consequences for flawed legal work. Even if technology tools were the source of an error, the human user is ultimately responsible.
Ourresearchrevealed that AI adoption among IP professionals also depends on the problems they are addressing. For tasks such as machine translation, search, and analytics, people are keener to embrace AI as these tools have been around much longer and are widely trusted. However, when it comes to document drafting, infringement research, and claim charting—tasks which have traditionally required the IP lawyer's expert touch—AI is still earning trust.
Explainable AI
Keeping humans in the loop is incredibly important to the development of AI solutions for IP, as is the need to provide transparent AI solutions that enable users to verify their inner workings. AI assistants for IP need to be able to 'explain' how they got to their conclusion, if users are to prevent potential bias, copyright, or hallucination issues.
Solutions likeQthena, Questel's AI assistant for patent and trademark productivity, and Sophia, our AI ecosystem for IP search and analysis, facilitate this process by enabling users to see and verify their findings—and quickly. You don't have to open a paper file or log into a different system to view the source information. It's all there in the single interface.
Confidentiality First
To build trust among users, AI providers also need to address ongoing concerns about data security and confidentiality. While some standards exist to guide compliance in this area, there is a lack of established regulation in this space. For now, the onus will be on suppliers to carefully navigate the trust negotiation between parties while they wait for regulatory systems to keep pace.
Closed-loop AI assistants dedicated to IP, such asQthenaandSophia, help safeguard the security and confidentiality of valuable IP assets. Not only are our AI productivity assistants hosted on a separate server, but they are also never trained using the data users enter. Cases are shielded from each other by design, so you can be confident that confidential information remains so.
Preparing for the Future
Is AI just a passing fascination? Our2025 surveyfound 65% of respondents believe AI will forever disrupt traditional supplier models for IP services, while 45% believe AI technologies are an inevitable progression.
Once AI becomes more ingrained in IP practice, we expect the ability to use, review, and validate the output of AI-driven solutions to revolutionize the IP profession. Auditing AI's work, creating new kinds of data, and interpreting results will become a vital new human skill. By embracing the new technologies today, IP practitioners will be better positioned to harness AI capabilities in the future.
The 2025 Report's title, "Pathways to Productivity," reflects how we at Questel are striving to discover how AI can make IP professionals more productive, while addressing quality, security, and confidentiality concerns. AI is at the very beginning of its journey to transform IP practice, and we are excited to see where this path to productivity will lead.
To find out more about the potential of AI for IP, download our2025 industry research, explore ourAI assistants for patentandtrademark productivity, orcontactour subject matter experts for tailored support.
This blog was originally published on the website ofIP Service Worldin November 2025.
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.
