At the Israel Patent Office’s annual 2026 conference, recently held in Israel, a panel of examiners and patent attorneys discussed the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the patent registration process. Here is a brief overview of some of the positions presented by the examiners and speakers on the panel.
Several interesting points were raised in the discussion that every applicant and practitioner in the field should know, and consider whether it is wise at this stage to use AI tools to draft patent applications at all, and what drawbacks examiners and professionals see that may be critical to obtaining a patent and to the scope of protection received.
Patent Examiners Panel
On the panel, patent examiner Ronen raised the issue that when he receives a drafted patent application, he immediately identifies whether it was drafted by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool or by a registered patent attorney. Examiner Ronen noted that drafts he recently received that were written by artificial intelligence have significant problems, including inconsistent use of terms, a lack of technology, and obviousness.
Participation badge at the Israel Patent Office conference
Patent Registration: Consistent Terminology
In patent registration it is important to define and use the same terms, and they must be defined in the supporting description of the application. For example, if artificial intelligence calls an object by a different name, such as “a board with 4 legs” in one place, while elsewhere in the same application the object is called “a table”, there will be a problem with the application due to inconsistency, or in other words, a lack of consistent terminology. Another example: if the supporting description of the application defines, say, a “sterile area”, and elsewhere the AI writes “an area without dirt”, the examiner will have difficulty approving the application. According to the discussion on the Patent Office panel, as argued by a senior patent examiner on the panel, in his view and that of the speakers, applications written by artificial intelligence will not pass examination for the grant of a registered patent, but will rather be sent back for an additional examination report, which of course involves costs and extends the examination timelines.
Lack of Technology in Artificial Intelligence Drafts
At the Patent Office conference, the speakers expressed the position that applications recently filed that were drafted by artificial intelligence and various AI tools suffer from a lack of technology. In other words, artificial intelligence knows how to wrap the subject in texts that sometimes look impressive to an unprofessional eye, but in fact there is nothing behind them.
Artificial intelligence struggles to find creative solutions. In fact, it feeds on existing information and copies existing knowledge of known technologies from the internet, and does not understand that a patent application requires new technology, without which a patent is not granted.
Artificial Intelligence Cannot Invent to the Level of a Patent
Artificial intelligence cannot invent, it copies from what already exists. This claim was raised by the Patent Office examiner at the conference as well as by other speakers: drafts of patent applications that are filed after being written by AI tools and artificial intelligence are obvious. One of the reasons for this is that artificial intelligence has no creative thinking and draws its information from the internet, i.e. from existing and known information. So certainly no patent will be granted for copied material that artificial intelligence takes from one place on the internet and submits to the patent examiners for the registration of a new patent.
In other words, as of 2026 there is a significant barrier: when an examiner identifies that an application was drafted by artificial intelligence, he examines it with extra care, since in his experience it is usually information copied from another source, and the examiner at the Patent Office stated that in such an examination, increased emphasis will be placed on the prior art search.
More on Patents, AI and Artificial Intelligence
The conference also discussed the work of the patent attorney in the world of AI and artificial intelligence. The speakers, patent attorneys and examiners raised a problem that makes drafting the application more difficult when a patent attorney receives information from a client. Whereas in the past the client would bring a focused invention and perhaps write a short explanation, today, with the help of AI and artificial intelligence, the patent attorney receives long texts from the client or the inventor that contain nothing but material copied by artificial intelligence from other sources on the internet, with no novelty at all. This makes it difficult for the patent attorney to extract, find and focus the client on what the invention is. Whereas in the past a short explanation of up to one page would be received, today one easily receives long documents of 30 to 40 pages, which take a long time to read in order to extract the inventive point, which is the significant part of the patent application.
On the examiners’ side, the same point raised by the patent attorneys was made: an examiner who receives a draft produced by artificial intelligence does not find novelty and inventive step, and if there is any, it will be difficult for him to extract it from all the unnecessary text that needlessly burdens the application and gives no legal value to the patent.
The bottom line: the patent attorney’s work of extracting the invention from the unnecessary material received from the inventor only burdens the work and causes additional working time, for which the client inventor pays in addition. This is because it is difficult to extract an invention from the trivial texts that artificial intelligence copies from the internet, from which it feeds. The phrase used was “separating the wheat from the chaff”, i.e. extracting what the invention is from long texts that contain nothing with an inventive step.
AI and artificial intelligence know the past, but, according to the panel’s position, they cannot predict or imagine the future. Inventors today rely less on the professional patent attorney than in the past, and in this they are mistaken. The panel concluded that there is definitely great, important and significant value, in terms of the chances of obtaining the patent and its scope, in whether it is drafted by a registered patent attorney or by an artificial intelligence machine.
The discussion also addressed limiting the excessive amount of text that artificial intelligence produces, which causes examiners and patent attorneys unnecessary work that does not justify itself, and for which inventors will ultimately pay through higher fees and legal costs.
The Problem of Information Sharing in the World of Patents and Artificial Intelligence
It was also discussed that when artificial intelligence is used to draft a patent application, there is an additional problem of certain platforms sharing information with others. When an inventor’s information goes out into the open, there is a risk of exposure to other parties, whether through leakage on the internet or through review by humans who supervise AI and artificial intelligence and may be exposed to information on certain platforms.
Summary of the Points Raised at the Israel Patent Office Conference 2026
Artificial intelligence can actually help professionals who know how to distinguish between the essential and the trivial, like a business assistant, but the decision should be made by the professional, the attorney or the patent attorney, and certainly by the patent examiner. Inventors harm themselves when they rely on AI and artificial intelligence rather than on the patent attorney or the attorney handling the case, who knows how to distinguish between the essential and the trivial, between an obvious matter and novelty and inventive step, and who can see the future and recognize creativity and imagination in order to define an inventive step, which artificial intelligence does not have as of today.
The above information is general and should not be regarded as advice. Each case must be examined specifically on its own merits. Contact us now for more information. If you have an invention, contact us for a first professional introductory call with a professional at +972-3-9711013
