Introduction
There is a growing view that the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, at technology centers established by global companies in India will accelerate the creation of new products and intellectual property. Executives from Epsilon, a subsidiary of France’s Publicis Groupe, Kimberly-Clark, and Daimler Truck, who attended the Reuters Summit, stated that at global capability centers, or GCCs, in India, AI-driven automation is reducing routine work and enabling employees to focus on more advanced tasks and the development of proprietary technologies. The head of Daimler Truck Innovation Center India also indicated that the intellectual property, patents, and trade secrets generated by India’s GCCs are already increasing, and that AI is expected to accelerate this trend further.
What is particularly noteworthy about this news is that AI is not being discussed merely as a tool for improving operational efficiency. Rather, it is being viewed as a factor that may transform the very organizational structure through which intellectual property is created.
India’s GCCs Are No Longer Merely “Low-Cost Development Centers”
In the past, technology centers in India may have been strongly associated with places where companies carried out development and support work at lower cost. However, what this news shows is a change that goes beyond that stage.
GCCs are increasingly being positioned not as mere outsourcing destinations or auxiliary development centers, but as internal hubs responsible for core operations within global companies. In particular, as the introduction of AI automates part of the work involved in coding, data organization, routine verification, and document preparation support, the role of human employees is shifting toward more upstream tasks such as design, problem definition, technical judgment, and product conception.
This shift has significant implications for India’s GCCs. Their role is changing from centers that process large volumes of work at low cost to centers that generate technologies capable of influencing the competitiveness of global companies. In other words, AI may not simply take work away from India’s GCCs; rather, it may help move them toward higher-value activities.
What Does It Mean for AI to Accelerate IP Creation?
The expression “AI accelerates IP creation” may, at first glance, sound as though AI itself is making inventions. In practice, however, the point is somewhat different.
The role of AI is not to completely replace invention itself, but to increase the speed of exploration, organization, comparison, and verification leading up to invention. For example, identifying technical problems, organizing differences from existing technologies, generating design proposals, analyzing simulation results, reviewing related literature, and comparing specification proposals are areas that are highly compatible with AI.
As a result, engineers can be freed from peripheral tasks that previously consumed much of their time, allowing them to spend more time on essential judgment. This may lead to an increase in potential inventions, more seeds for patent applications, and more know-how that should be managed as trade secrets.
However, what is important here is that AI-generated outputs cannot simply be treated as intellectual property as they are. To turn them into patents, it is necessary to organize them as technical ideas, examine novelty and inventive step, and clarify who was involved in the creative process and how. In IP creation in the AI era, not only speed but also the system for identifying inventions and securing rights will become increasingly important.
We Should Not Focus Only on the Increase in Patent Numbers
One striking aspect of this news is that the number of IP assets, patents, and trade secrets generated by India’s GCCs is increasing. From the perspective of IP strategy, however, it is risky to evaluate success solely based on the increase in numbers.
Even if the number of patent applications increases, if those applications do not lead to a business advantage, they may only increase maintenance fees and management costs. Conversely, even if the number of applications is small, IP value can be high if the company secures core technologies that directly contribute to product differentiation.
In an era in which AI generates large numbers of potential inventions, it will become increasingly important to decide what should be patented, what should be managed as trade secrets, and what should be accumulated internally as know-how without being disclosed. IP departments will be required not only to improve the efficiency of application processing, but also to make decisions that are closely aligned with business strategy.
Ownership and Management of Inventions Created at GCCs
As India’s GCCs become more important as invention centers, more IP management issues will arise. Particularly important points include ownership of inventions, the scope of joint development, management of trade secrets, and rules for data use.
In the case of global companies, people involved in research and development may be spread across multiple countries. For example, a technical idea may arise at a GCC in India, specifications may be determined at headquarters, and verification may be conducted at a site in another country. In such cases, companies need to organize in advance who should be named as inventors, which legal entity should become the applicant, and in which country the application should be filed first.
When AI is used, the management of input data and output results is also important. Practical rules will be needed regarding whether confidential information or customer data may be entered into AI tools, how AI-generated design proposals should be recorded, and how much of the AI usage history should be included in invention disclosure forms.
In IP creation in the AI era, it is not enough to simply gather talented engineers. Companies need mechanisms for identifying the moment an invention is created, recording it properly, and determining whether it should be protected through rights or kept confidential.
Implications for Japanese Companies
This news is also relevant to Japanese companies. Japanese companies also conduct technology development through overseas development centers, research subsidiaries, contractors, and joint research partners. As AI adoption progresses, the places where inventions arise may become increasingly dispersed, both inside and outside Japan.
What will be important at that point is to reconsider the assumption that “inventions are created at headquarters.” Competitive inventions may emerge from sites close to the field, sites close to customer problems, sites that possess data, or sites where engineers are skilled in using AI.
What Japanese companies should learn is that AI should not be introduced merely as a tool for operational efficiency, but should be incorporated into the IP creation process. There is room to use AI in areas surrounding IP work, such as invention mining, prior art searches, idea organization, the pre-drafting stage of patent specifications, and inventories of trade secrets.
At the same time, using AI does not automatically increase the number of strong patents. What matters is the human judgment that converts the ideas increased by AI into intellectual property that has business significance. A company that is strong in the AI era is not one that can use AI to generate large numbers of ideas, but one that can select, from among them, the technologies that should truly be protected.
The Role of IP Departments Will Also Change
As AI accelerates the speed of invention creation, the role of IP departments will also change. If IP departments continue to operate only by receiving invention disclosures and deciding whether to file applications, they may no longer be able to keep up with the speed at which inventions are generated.
Going forward, IP departments will need to collaborate with research and development departments and overseas sites from an early stage, and design strategies for which technical fields should be covered by patent portfolios, which information should be protected as trade secrets, and in which countries rights should be obtained. In overseas sites such as GCCs in particular, education for local inventors, operation of invention disclosure systems, management of confidential information, and selection of filing countries will become important.
As AI increases the number of potential inventions, IP departments will be required to have not only processing capacity but also editorial capability. In other words, they will need the ability to identify inventions with business value from among countless pieces of technical information and shape them into meaningful rights.
Conclusion
This news shows that AI is pushing India’s GCCs beyond the role of mere business processing centers and turning them into innovation centers that create intellectual property. AI-driven automation reduces routine work while creating an environment in which engineers can focus on more advanced design and development. As a result, the creation of patents and trade secrets may accelerate.
However, in an era in which IP creation accelerates, merely increasing the number of IP assets is not enough. What matters is selecting the many ideas generated through AI in line with business strategy and managing them appropriately as patents, trade secrets, or know-how.
AI will change the front lines of invention. However, deciding which inventions to protect and which technologies to turn into competitive advantage will remain a human task. The transformation of India’s GCCs may indicate that IP strategy in the AI era has entered a stage in which the key differentiator is not the quantity of inventions, but the mechanism for making effective use of them.