USPTO Adds Company to $50M Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Contract

The United States Patent and Trademark Office officially selected a new partner to support its increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

General Dynamics Information Technology on Monday announced it was awarded a contract worth up to $50 million through USPTO's Intelligent Automation and Innovation Support Services blanket purchase agreement. 

GDIT is the latest of more than a dozen companies the agency tapped under the future-facing BPA. Other businesses who’ve made their own recent announcements detailing partnerships via the agreement include Octo and Steampunk.

In the announcement, Vice President & General Manager Christopher Hegedus for GDIT’s Diplomacy, Commerce and Government Operations business area noted the company’s supported the agency for nearly two decades, and through this “new work, [aims to bring its] AI, ML and robotic process automation expertise to help USPTO develop solutions that accelerate the patent and trademark process to benefit American innovators.” 

Charged with issuing patents for inventions and registering trademarks for product and intellectual property identification, USPTO is making deliberate moves to “propel” itself into the next decade technologically, the agency’s chief information officer recently told Nextgov. And it appears the BPA is one avenue helping it to do exactly that. According to GDIT’s announcement, the partners will work together to pilot, test and implement new solutions across AI, ML and natural language processing. 

The work could make waves across both the agency’s internal operations and external efforts. “GDIT solutions will accelerate citizen applications and requests, predict fraudulent transactions, identify opportunities for operational efficiencies to cut cost and reduce patent and trademark application backlogs,” the release said. 

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