EPO’s New AI Chatbot for Navigating Patent Guidelines

Wolfgang Braun

Dec 9, 2024 — 1 min read

The European Patent Office has unveiled a powerful new tool for navigating the EPC 2023, PCT-EPO Guidelines, EPC Guidelines, PCT Guidelines, and more. This Legal Interactive Platform comes in the form of an interactive legal chatbot, leveraging large language model (LLM) technology. Originally launched as an internal tool, it’s now available to the public — and for free.

During my hands-on experience with the chatbot, I encountered an unexpected but welcome feature: when it couldn’t provide an answer, it simply replied, “I don’t know.” This is a significant improvement over chatbots that “hallucinate” responses, offering false or misleading information instead of admitting uncertainty.

On top of that, the EPO chatbot did provide several useful and accurate responses.

Its ability to address complex legal queries seems to surpass that of the USPTO Virtual Assistant, making it a potentially more reliable resource for patent professionals.

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