Summary
At the 2026 AIPPI World Congress in Hamburg, AI dominated discussion among patent practitioners more than patentability, the UPC or SEP arbitration, according to JUVE Patent. The reported picture is of daily use of general-purpose tools, driven largely from outside IP departments and concentrated on prosecution. AIPPI has signalled a resolution on agentic AI and IP, so firms and in-house teams should set their own usage rules now rather than wait for one.
The Event
The Congress ran in Hamburg from 7 to 10 October 2026, as reported by the Kluwer Patent Blog. JUVE Patent counted six AI-related sessions. Five took place on Thursday 8 October. The sixth, an SGT Café on agentic AI for IP professionals, ran on the Friday. Topics included AI-driven biotech innovation, AI tools for IP practice, and the protection of human creation made with AI.
At a 30-minute AIPPI Café session, a spontaneous poll of roughly 30 participants found that most use general AI tools, and only five use IP-specific AI products. Most use AI daily. JUVE Patent reports that applications built on Anthropic's Claude were used particularly often, with ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot also common. For many participants, the push to adopt AI came from the wider company or from individual initiative, not from the IP department itself.
Participants also described organisational strain. Some reported that employees had resigned rather than use AI. Others said colleagues had moved to AI developers to apply their IP expertise there. In private practice, JUVE Patent reports concern over whether investment in AI tools can be recovered from clients and, more pressingly, over how to train the next generation of lawyers and whether enough future partners will emerge.
At the Friday agentic AI session, most participants hoped AI agents could organise workflows under growing volumes of information and documents. JUVE Patent reports that the discussion focused exclusively on prosecution; litigation impact was described as still minimal and was scarcely discussed.
A roundtable on AI and the patent system brought together EPO President Campinos, German Patent and Trade Mark Office President Eva Schewior, UPC President Klaus Grabinski, the WTO's Tanuja Garde, and Aleš Zalar, President of the UPC's PMAC.
Context
AIPPI's formal output comes through resolutions. National groups prepare their country's position on each study question, draft resolutions are debated in plenary, and the Executive Committee adopts them, according to AIPPI. Adopted resolutions are then communicated to law-making bodies. They are not binding law, but they shape the positions that offices and legislators hear from the profession.
On AI, AIPPI has already adopted an "AI & Copyright" resolution proposing a legal framework for using copyrighted works in AI training, and two earlier patent resolutions on inventorship and on inventive step and disclosure, per JUVE Patent. The Hamburg patent study question itself was not about AI: the Executive Committee adopted a resolution on divisional applications and double patenting, holding that an applicant should not obtain more than one patent in force for the same subject matter, in the same jurisdiction, from the same granting authority, and rejecting an obviousness test for double patenting (Kluwer Patent Blog).
The AI discussion in Hamburg was therefore practitioner exchange rather than rule-making. One caveat applies to the numbers: the tool poll covered about 30 people in one session. It indicates direction, not market share.
Implications
The most practical finding is the mismatch between where tools are used and who governs them. If adoption is driven by corporate IT or personal initiative, prosecution work may be passing through tools that the IP function never assessed. For patent work, the main exposure is unpublished invention disclosures and draft claims entered into general-purpose systems before filing. That is a confidentiality and contractual question the IP department should own.
- Run an inventory. List which AI tools attorneys and paralegals actually use for drafting, office-action responses and prior-art review, including personal accounts. Compare that list against approved tools.
- Classify inputs by stage. Set a rule for what may be entered before filing, after filing but before publication, and after publication. Pre-filing invention material warrants the strictest handling.
- Require a verification step. Treat AI output in claim amendments and arguments as a draft that a named attorney checks against the specification and the file history before anything reaches the office.
- Record human contribution. AIPPI has already addressed inventorship. Where AI assists in developing an invention, keep contemporaneous records of what the human inventors contributed, so inventorship can be supported if challenged.
For Korea-based in-house teams and firms handling outbound filings, the same tool-governance issue arises across every office they file in, and the agentic workflows discussed in Hamburg (docketing, document handling, multi-jurisdiction coordination) are the areas where high-volume Asian filers process the most material. A single internal policy covering all foreign associates who receive invention disclosures is more workable than office-by-office rules. Firms should also ask their foreign associates directly which AI tools touch client files.
The training concern also has a portfolio consequence. If routine drafting moves to tools, junior attorneys get fewer repetitions on the work that builds claim-drafting judgment. Teams should keep a deliberate share of drafting done from scratch by junior staff under review.
Outlook
JUVE Patent reports that a resolution on agentic AI and IP is in the pipeline, but AIPPI will first build case studies. The Standing Committee on AI, IT and the Internet is due to revisit the topic at the mid-term meeting in Mexico City in February 2027. A resolution is therefore some way off, and its content is unknown.
Two steps are worth taking in the meantime. First, adopt an internal AI policy now and review it after February 2027, rather than waiting for an external standard. Write it so the input-classification and verification rules can be tightened without rebuilding the workflow. Second, contribute to the case-study phase. AIPPI's process runs through national groups, which prepare country positions and propose study topics. Korean and other Asian practitioners who want their filing practices reflected should submit concrete prosecution examples through their national group before the Mexico City meeting.
Watch for whether the litigation side catches up. The Hamburg discussion was prosecution-only. When AI-assisted drafting starts to appear in validity challenges or disputes over file history, the record-keeping habits set now will determine how well those patents hold up.