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Invent horizon: imagining the patent system in 2050
The pace and complexity of technological development today have reached such levels that among the few projections they allow for with any surety is the fact that coming innovation will be highly disruptive. All the while promises and portents of change alarm and inspire, the interconnectivity of our modern world has had its vulnerabilities exposed in terms of industrial, trade, energy and economic dependencies.
Yet patenting in the future is not an eventuality to be prepared for; it is a journey still to be taken – one whose course will be plotted by the businesses, inventors, governments, populations and legal experts who engage with Intellectual Property (IP) over the years ahead.
Earlier this year, we revisited 2007's Scenarios for the Future project from the European Patent Office (EPO), which envisioned four possible realities for the global patent system in 2025. More than an application of hindsight, the exercise was a reminder to examine the actual status quo of the IP order more dispassionately and reflect on how much things have changed – and how quickly.
Taking a cue from the EPO, Dennemeyer now asks: How might patent regimes, together with their practitioners and participants, evolve by 2050?
Technology changing IP practice
The consensus among our thinkers is that technology will play an increasingly pivotal part in IP work as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more powerful and relevant. For example, machine learning-based tools for analyzing data and legal decisions may heighten accuracy in predicting case outcomes and lead to efficiencies in labor-intensive work such as litigation discovery and prior art searching. To some extent, this is already happening, but there is potential for much enhanced use and for new applications to be developed.
As AI is increasingly used in research and development and in creative work, questions may arise about the definition of familiar legal concepts in IP, such as the average consumer in trademark law and the person skilled in the art in patent law. These premises may need to be reviewed if and when computers begin making decisions that have always been made by or attributed to real or hypothetical humans. Under these circumstances, we will need to determine a computer's likelihood for confusion and what inventive steps are obvious to an AI.
The EPO's first scenario, Market Rules, imagined a world where ascendant technology corporations and other IP-intensive businesses saw patents more as commodities to be financially exploited than defensive walls around inventions. Pressure from these sources led to consolidation in the global patent system, eventually culminating in two major groupings: a Pacific Rim zone dominated by the United States and a common European patent.
In the immediate term, legal professionals will growingly explore the use of generative AI for everything from writing emails and case summaries to drafting legal briefs. This adjunctive role will allow a redistribution of human effort for the better. Perhaps, with sufficient confidence in these tools, it may even become normal to see them prepare contracts, court documents and legal judgments.
At present, generative AI is mostly used just for first drafts, which are subject to careful human revision. Over the next few years, we will probably find out how much further these programs can go and whether there are some tasks that can indeed be carried out fully autonomously.
Still, we will have to grapple with new questions about verification, security and fairness and whether (and how) the presence of AI in legal work needs to be regulated or standardized. As a demonstration of the risks of not having a qualified human in the loop, a UK judge found it "extremely troubling" in April 2025 that a barrister had cited a non-existent case seemingly fabricated by an AI tool.
It is already self-evident that AI users need a set of core skills that would have been unimaginable for IP practitioners even two years ago, including wrestling with digital hallucinations and creating effective prompts. We may therefore see a revolution in how companies, law firms and IP offices recruit and train IP staff, ultimately producing a more diverse, open and flexible profession.
Coalescence and fracture on the world stage
The expansion of automated processes should also lead to more coordination between IP offices. This will reduce the need for manual efforts such as translation and simplify procedures for everything from claiming priority to paying fees and dealing with administrative matters. We could expect this movement to be spearheaded by WIPO and the EPO.
Whose Game?, the second alternate reality, saw the concept of the patent pulled in opposite directions by geopolitical forces. In the wake of acute resource competition, two hemispherical blocs arose: a flagging West that retreated into protectionism while internal patenting withered and an Asia-South Pacific union that used exclusive rights to master an emergent knowledge economy.
By contrast, there is likely to be little progress on harmonizing substantive aspects of IP law if the current shift from multilateralism to bilateralism continues. The imposition of trade barriers such as tariffs could reinforce this tendency, though these obstacles can be reversed even more readily than erected. Hence, the tit-for-tat levying of such duties, so wildly mutable in 2025, would appear to be a fleeting, if blunt, instrument of "blink-first diplomacy."
Where further confluence of the patent system will appear, it will be regionalized and temperate. Taking the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA) for the prime exemplar, even within as comparatively close-knit an economic and political entity as the European Union, the negotiation process was painfully slow and beset, having to overcome a German constitutional complaint and Brexit. Thus, the synthesis of multiple national patent offices into new regional bodies or the emergence of the same made from whole cloth is doubtful outside of lower-volume jurisdictions or where political irredentism or spheres of influence vigorously assert themselves.
Nevertheless, the tremendous achievement of the UPC's creation is not to be downplayed, and now that the court is operational, its expansion over the next 25 years is all but assured. The six signatory nations that have not yet deposited their ratifications are the most immediate contenders, but there are also three EU countries that have not yet signed, with the option extending to any future Union states. Some players to track are:
- Ireland, a signatory, will reschedule its delayed referendum to allow for accession.
- Poland was convinced by a Deloitte study in 2012 that not joining the UPC would be the financially preferable option. In time, observing the effects of participation on comparable economies could reverse this decision.
- Spain continues to object to the UPCA's official language rules, but these could conceivably be sidelined if the benefits are seen to outweigh the translation inconvenience. A model can be found in Italy, which ratified the UPCA despite sharing the same reservations.
In the third chain of events, Trees of Knowledge, a catastrophic influenza pandemic in 2012 discredited the patent system in the eyes of hard-hit populations, who saw these IP rights as barriers to vaccines. Ultimately, patenting was all but discontinued in favor of trademarks, trade secrets, design rights and geographic indications. However, the lack of profit incentives smothered innovation in many sectors.
Even the lack of a language barrier (spelling conventions aside) is no guarantee of harmony, as may be seen within the Anglosphere. Cracks in relations between the United States and the United Kingdom will eventually be smoothed out, but the fact that they appeared in the first place could be enough to sully trust for a period. In time, having a congenial environment closer to the United Kingdom, combined with the universality of English as an option for UPC first-instance proceedings, could result in an "IP détente" with Europe.
Rising stars and stalwart economies
Politics can always be relied upon to be fickle, and a culture of enterprise to be enduring, and so the United States will surely remain a generative powerhouse and a legislative bellwether for emergent technologies. Though it misses out on the top spot in total patents generated and global innovation indices, the eyes of the world will be fixed on the United States' market and knowledge economies, to say nothing of the outputs of both.
This will be in spite of geopolitical weight shifting eastward and the upswing in countries poised to develop into engines of IP as they mature economically. We have already seen this very clearly in China and, to a lesser extent, in India. It is hard to predict which countries will follow them, but some worth watching are Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and, depending on the course of sanctions, Russia. These are all countries that have reasonable IP infrastructure, economic resources and large markets, making them well placed for future growth.
Incentives and encouraging signs
These trends will likely mean that patents will remain fundamental to fostering innovation. Indeed, their impact will likely manifest in larger value extraction from intellectual assets as practitioners spend less time on mundane tasks, meaning the unit costs of IP protection will gradually diminish in real terms.
The final narrative explored by the EPO attested to a split of the patent into a "soft" and a "classic" version. Blue Skies pictured compulsory licenses of rights for technologies, such as hydrogen fuel cells, intended to slow or reverse environmental decay. Ambiguities at the border between these patents and their traditional counterparts deepened litigation, while open-source, collaborative innovation offered an alternative development cycle.
Money saved on developing, registering and maintaining IP rights will free up resources for businesses to focus on increasing corporate capital through enforcement, licensing and other means of leveraging IP rights. This will present fresh opportunities for companies that invest in research and development across industry sectors. Financial stakeholders in businesses that take this approach will also benefit from greater predictability and potentially higher returns thanks to more efficient and transparent IP processes. We may, therefore, see loans, asset-backed securitization and insurance policies collateralized by IP rights. This funding may come from diverse sources, including governments, dedicated investors and the wider capital markets.
As we look forward to 2026, and even further to 2050, there is reason to be optimistic about IP, and patents in particular. Innovation is likely to accelerate, driven by the use of AI across the board, not least in medicine, energy, transport and digital communication. With the implementation of new tools and technologies, patents will be indispensable to commercialization activities and scientific endeavors for a long time indeed.
To read our retrospective series on the Scenarios for the Future study, see:
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