IPR and AI-Driven Innovation: Legal Ambiguities & Regulatory Gaps

Abstract

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence from an analytical tool to a generative agent has created a fundamental "pacing problem," where technological capabilities outstrip the statutory and doctrinal frameworks of intellectual property law. This article analyzes the resulting legal ambiguities and regulatory gaps across patent, copyright, and trade secret regimes. Through doctrinal legal analysis of key jurisprudence, legislation, and policy proposals, it examines core challenges: the non-human inventor dilemma in patent law, the authorship and training data infringement crises in copyright, and the transparency trade-offs of protecting AI as a trade secret. The article further argues that these doctrinal strains are exacerbated by cross-jurisdictional fragmentation and the emergence of horizontal AI regulations, such as the EU AI Act, which create conflicting obligations. It finds that incremental adaptations to existing IP doctrines are necessary but insufficient. The most coherent path forward requires a paradigm shift prioritizing international harmonization on training data access, the development of clear liability frameworks for AI outputs, and a re-examination of incentive structures that may fall outside classical IP paradigms. This contribution highlights the urgent need for legal systems to evolve from solely protecting human creativity to effectively governing the novel ecosystem of machine-generated innovation.