Study shows that 77% of IP law professionals are enthusiastic about AI and 76% believe AI adoption creates a competitive advantage
Questel, a world leader in intellectual property solutions, officially released its global 2025 IP Outlook Research Report 'Pathways to Productivity: AI in IP' to the public today.
Including insights from 500+ IP professionals worldwide, Questel's second annual Report revealed that 77% of IP organizations are enthusiastic about adopting AI within their law practices and 76% of respondents believe AI adoption creates a competitive advantage. 58% already actively use AI solutions for IP, citing positive impact on their work. Nearly half (46%) already use AI solutions for IP at least once a day. Only 5% expressed reluctance to use AI.
Why AI for IP?
What lies beneath the drive to adopt AI solutions for IP? Respondents said:
- 77% are actively seeking ways to save time and costs.
- 45% believe AI technologies are an inevitable progression.
- 42% are interested in any tech that adds new efficiencies.
- 39% invested in AI out of curiosity to measure quality and potential benefits
Realized Time and Budget Savings
Reducing cost in terms of time and money are both motivations for AI use, and 45% of respondents estimate that AI solutions for IP deliver time savings of at least 25%. One-third (33%) of respondents estimate a budget savings of 25% or more due to AI adoption.
Is AI Here to Stay?
So is AI just a temporary experiment, a passing trend that will eventually dissipate? The research says no-the majority of respondents see a sustained and permanent impact for AI to their IP work. A substantial 64% believed AI would "forever transform the role of IP professionals". 65% of respondents held that AI will "forever disrupt traditional supplier models for IP services".
IP's Most Valued AI-enabled Features
The top 3 features IP professionals valued most in their AI tools were:
#1 Summarization (65%)
#2 Search Assistants in Natural Language (59%)
#3 Translation (55%
Rounding out the top 6 were #4 Chatbots/Q&A (42%), #5 Image Search (40%), and #6 Task Automation (34%
AI Uses Differ for Patents Trademarks
As IP professionals increasingly use AI to assist their specific tasks, trends are emerging about which solutions are the most useful depending on patent vs. trademark specialization.
For patents, AI was used by 92% for Patent Search, 81% for Patent Summarization, and 64% for Patent Translation. For trademarks, Trademark Search was used by 91% followed by Trademark Watch (53%) and Office Action Response Management (51%
Trusting AI-Powered Support
When choosing their product and service suppliers, IP professionals understandably have concerns about data security, confidentiality, and transparency to protect their valuable IP rights and mitigate data breach risks. IP partners must be responsible and trustworthy, capable of ensuring security. A large majority (83%) of respondents were influenced by AI capabilities when selecting an IP search or watching provider.
Acknowledging these concerns, Questel focuses its resources on developing AI solutions that assist human expertise in IP through responsible and ethical use of emerging technologies. "The advent of 'Explainable AI' (XAI) will help build further trust in AI, with AI assistants able to describe their decision-making processes and how they reached a specific conclusion," said Benoit Chevalier, Patent Product Strategy Director at Questel. "For example, Questel already provides AI solutions with anti-hallucination means to combat false or misleading information by citing sources and explaining 'why' a result has been generated."
About the 2025 IP Survey Report
Questel surveyed more than 500 IP professionals across the globe in Winter/Spring 2025. Participants represented a variety of positions at law firms and corporate legal, with 57% holding senior positions as Chief IP Officer, Head of IP/Legal, GC, Law Firm Partner, or Company Director. 50% of respondents were from Europe, 18% from Americas, 25% from Asia Pacific and 6% from Middle East/Africa. 71% were patent specialists, 12% trademarks/designs/domain names, and 17% specialized in other types of IP. Slightly more than half (53%) of respondents were from in-house/corporate legal departments, 23% from law firms, and the remaining from academia, start-ups and other organizations. Click here to request the 2025 Report.
About Questel
Questel is a true end-to-end intellectual property solutions provider to more than 20,000 clients and 1.5M users across 30 countries. Questel offers a comprehensive scope of software and services for managing all types of IP assets (patent, trademark, design, domain name, copyright), including searching, analyzing, and watching, international filing, translation, renewals, and recordals. These solutions, when combined with our IP cost management platform, deliver clients an average savings of 30% across the entire prosecution budget. Questel has 30 offices around the world and is headquartered in Paris, France. Find out more at Questel.com or on LinkedIn.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250729738981/en/
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Media:
Christy Burke, Burke Company PR, 917-623-5096, cburke@burke-company.com
