Many of our clients and colleagues have expressed curiosity about our firm’s use of generative AI in patent prosecution. Our firm uses generative AI tools for document drafting and other tasks in patent prosecution. We are also testing and evaluating generative AI tools for patent prosecution on an ongoing basis. The tools have been evaluated by our litigators as well. If the litigators come to favor a tool alongside the prosecutors, it would naturally help the case for adopting that tool.

We are optimistic about the prospects of generative AI for providing greater support over time for our legal work, as a tool that may aid both quality and efficiency. Below, we explain how we are using generative AI and other software tools in patent prosecution today, as well as how we plan to continue in the new year to test, evaluate, and adopt generative AI tools.

Our Firm’s Approach to Generative AI and Other Software Tools

Our firm has an AI Committee, which includes a group of lawyers and staff who are especially interested in testing and evaluating AI tools for patent prosecution. Together, we worked throughout 2025 to evaluate generative AI tools for patent prosecution, along with other software tools for patent prosecution. 

Our committee’s approach combines optimism and curiosity about tools that can help us with our work, together with caution about protecting our clients’ confidential information. 

We found tools to evaluate through our colleagues’ personal recommendations, for which we are grateful. We also found tools to evaluate through conference presentations, online demonstrations, online searches (including those powered by AI), and the like. We have evaluated security, confidentiality, and privacy issues and have conducted trials of various tools (generative AI tools, as well as other tools) with subgroups of our attorneys, agents, and staff. 

If a tool is helpful and cost-effective, our next step has been a partial trial adoption of the tool by some of our attorneys and agents. A tool may eventually graduate to firmwide availability and adoption. So far, two tools have progressed to firmwide availability: ChatGPT (through a paid, commercial “Workspace”) and Patent Bots.  Adoption always lags for software, but is progressing at an expected pace.

Our Use of Generative AI and Other Software Tools Today

We have lawyers, agents, and staff at various levels of generative AI usage, with most ranging from limited usage to moderate usage, with a few power users. We have successfully used generative AI to aid us in working on several classes of tasks:

• Initial drafts of portions of patent applications, responses to office actions, correspondence, and other documents
• Integrating separate documents into one document, report, or presentation
• Proofreading documents for clarity, grammar, and internal consistency
• Exploring alternative arguments, descriptions, and phrasing
• Digesting and summarizing information, such as prior art references or lengthy correspondence, with targeted prompts to emphasize details of interest

We anticipate that our use of generative AI tools will yield increasing benefits over time as the available tools and our skills improve.

As a firm, we also use Patent Bots software to aid proofreading and document-shell generation. Although Patent Bots contains some functions that rely on generative AI, most functions are based on text processing without generative AI. Many of our attorneys use Patent Bots to check claim sets for antecedent basis, to check specifications for consistent use of reference numerals, and to verify correspondence between drawing figures and the specification. 

Limitations of Generative AI (So Far)

In our testing, generative AI has not shown itself to be reliable for providing complete drafts of complex legal documents, such as full patent applications or responses to office actions. We find that generative AI can be effective when it is carefully prompted to perform discrete tasks, such as revising a section of a document, transforming a list of points into narrative prose, or summarizing text in a specifically directed manner. Generative AI often wanders a bit from the user’s intended course, and we find it is better to prompt for a discrete task and correct course rather than try to line-edit a complete document that is not close to the desired result. 

One danger of generative AI is output that, although organized and polished, is inaccurate. Despite the power of generative AI in preparing text rapidly, and despite interfaces that describe generative AI as “reasoning,” users must keep in mind that generative AI is not an omniscient computer like the ship’s computer on Star Trek. Instead, generative AI is a writing tool that must be carefully instructed and checked. Generative AI is a tireless and fast writer that, in certain situations, can produce useful output (generally draft document segments), but the output must be carefully reviewed. Given the nature of AI output, a statistically-based, predictively generated text, it should not be expected to easily identify or describe novel elements. Every AI-generated output must be subjected to attorney judgment and review. We understand that a reviewer of generative AI output must carefully consider not just advocacy, grammar, and style but factual accuracy and completeness. We understand that generative AI is a writing tool and not a factual resource. We also understand that generative AI is not ready to replace the expertise of the lawyer responsible for a matter.

Ongoing Evaluations of Generative AI and Other Software Tools

We have tried various generative AI tools that are directed to the legal industry, as well as general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT. The legal AI tools we have tested function as intermediary services that provide document storage and generate prompts that are submitted to a general-purpose generative AI platform. In our experience to date, our ChatGPT “Workspace” (together with our growing skill as users) has been sufficiently effective that we have not subscribed to any legal AI tool. Some of our attorneys like certain features (such as pre-drafted prompts) that are included in the legal AI tools. Some found these features helpful for patent prosecution and for other tasks (including litigation tasks), but so far we have decided to keep looking and testing. 

As a result, moving into 2026, we will continue to evaluate additional generative AI tools for patent prosecution. In the new year, we are evaluating a generative AI tool trained on patent data (rather than general training data). At the same time, we will continue to build our collective skill in prompting ChatGPT to obtain output that, properly vetted, can help us provide high-quality work with a high degree of efficiency.

We’ll let you know how it goes.

Our firm and our AI Committee wish you a happy New Year. 

Ron Ventola

Ron Ventola is Counsel to Panitch Schwarze Belisario & Nadel and practices patent law, including patent prosecution, clearance analysis, and related counseling. He has a keen interest in the use of generative AI and other software tools for patent prosecution and related legal work. He has spoken about the use of AI tools in patent prosecution before the Intellectual Property Owners Association, including moderating “AI and Patent Examination and Drafting (in the US)” at the 2025 IPO Spring Summit, “Use of AI/ChatGPT in Patent Prosecution” at the 2023 IPO Annual Meeting, and the well-attended IPO webinar “Updates on AI/ChatGPT in Patent Prosecution” (March 19, 2024). Ron was also an invited speaker at the “Listening Session on the Impact of the Proliferation of AI on Prior Art and a Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art” held by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (July 19, 2024).