It is well known that patenting AI and other computer-implemented inventions is difficult, particularly in the United States, but inventions of this type are significantly easier to patent in the Biotech field at the EPO – and this patenting opportunity should not be overlooked.
In contrast to other territories, particularly the United States, computer-implemented inventions in the Biotech field (including in drug discovery, diagnostics, and platform technologies such as sequencing technology) stand a very good chance of being patentable in Europe, subject to the usual requirements for novelty and inventive step. Applying the EPO’s now well-established practice on computer-implemented inventions, the ‘purpose’ underlying such inventions in the Biotech field should usually be deemed ‘technical’ by the EPO. For instance, a computational method for predicting binding affinity, identifying an epitope, or predicting the phenotypic impact of a genetic variant could all be deemed ‘technical’. So, in contrast to the common difficulties faced by US practitioners, AI and other computational innovations in the Biotech field should only rarely be excluded from patentability in Europe, so long as the patent specification is drafted correctly to frame the invention properly.
“Everyone wants to be TechBio now”
At TechBio UK 2024, one speaker commented that “everyone wants to be TechBio now”. We are certainly seeing this reflected in the applications, patents, and problems that our clients are approaching us with.
To get a feel for what kinds of inventions might be patentable at the EPO, it can be helpful to look at the patent classification codes. At the EPO, ‘bioinformatics’ is recognised as its own distinct category of technology (with the CPC code G16B). According to the EPO’s definition, bioinformatics encompasses the analysis of omics data (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics), sequencing methods and the analysis of sequence reads, modelling biological systems, and analysing or predicting protein folding. ‘Computational chemistry’ is also recognised as its own field of technology at the EPO (CPC code G16C), encompassing the computer-aided drug discovery tools that are often the focus of discussion when thinking about computer-implemented inventions in biotechnology.
Even aside from these specific subjects, though, we are noticing an increase in the number of patent applications from all areas of technology involving some aspect of AI and software, even if the computational aspects are not the main focus of the application. We expect this trend to continue as more companies invest in AI and machine learning technology. However, these companies are often Biotech companies, not traditional Tech companies, and so patenting innovations in the computational space can be unfamiliar. As well as established Biotech companies, there are a number of innovative startups in this area. For all startups, formulating an appropriate and effective patent strategy can be a formidable challenge, and TechBio startups can face an even greater challenge given the nature of their inventions.
The number of patent filings in healthcare informatics and bioinformatics has been climbing steadily for several years now, reaching approximately 38,900 [1] applications to date in the ‘G16B’ (Bioinformatics) CPC code in 2025.
Patent publications in ‘G16B’ CPC code, by year [2]
Perhaps this reflects the growing confidence in users of the patent system, as understanding of how best to claim bioinformatics and computational inventions improves, or more likely this might simply reflect the now-ubiquitous application of computation to solve biological and medical problems. Regardless, perhaps even more so than for other types of computer-implemented inventions, would-be patentees in this space are advised to think carefully about whether their invention merits filing a new patent application and to weigh up different ways in which the invention could be described.
To file or not to file?
Despite this patentability opportunity, we often see companies struggle to decide whether or not to try to patent computer-implemented inventions in the Biotech field. This struggle is not surprising given the prevailing uncertainty around how different patent offices around the world will react to a computational invention, the frequent difficulty in identifying the commercial value in granted AI and software patents, and the appeal of relying on trade secrets or other forms of formal or informal protection for proprietary computational methods.
Our next article in this series will consider the commercial relevance of patents for AI and other computer-implemented inventions in the Biotech field.
Contact the Carpmaels team
If you have any questions about patenting inventions that cross the boundaries of biology and computer technology, please get in touch with our highly experienced Digital Life Sciences team.
[1] According to Orbit Intelligence’s Questel database, with all patents and applications grouped into families; October 2025
[2] Graph generated using Patent Lens; October 2025