What Emotional Perception AI Means for Technology Founders

Why It Matters

Software businesses have traditionally had to navigate a difficult boundary between potentially patentable technical inventions and the statutory exclusion for a “program for a computer … as such”.

On 11 February 2026, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2026] UKSC 3. The case concerned an artificial neural network designed to recommend media files according to their physical properties and the emotional response they were intended to generate.

The significance of the decision now extends beyond the particular patent application. On 14 July 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office published a formal practice notice (opens in new tab) confirming that the judgment brought about an immediate change to the way section 1 of the Patents Act 1977 should be interpreted and applied when patent applications are searched and examined.

What Changed?

The commercial significance is not that software has suddenly become automatically patentable.

Rather, the UKIPO has had to change its approach to examining computer-implemented inventions following the Supreme Court's interpretation of section 1 of the Patents Act 1977.

That matters particularly for businesses developing technologies involving:

• artificial neural networks;
• machine-learning systems;
• recommendation technologies;
• software-driven technical processes;
• AI-enabled products; and
• other computer-implemented inventions.

A founder or technical team that previously decided not to investigate patent protection because the product was “software” should therefore be careful about relying on that earlier assumption without reconsidering the position under the post-Emotional Perception approach.

Patentability and Copyright Ownership Are Different Questions

One practical mistake is to treat patent protection and copyright ownership as versions of the same issue.

They are not.

Copyright may arise automatically in qualifying software code and related works. Patent protection, by contrast, requires an application and depends upon the statutory patentability requirements.

A business can therefore have a strong copyright position in its software while having no relevant patent rights at all. Equally, a potentially patentable technical invention does not resolve the separate question of who owns the underlying software code.

This distinction has become increasingly important as AI-assisted development creates more complicated ownership chains involving founders, employees, contractors, agencies, open-source components and AI coding tools.

Our separate guide, AI-Assisted Software IP Lawyers Guide For UK Founders , examines those software ownership and chain-of-title issues in more detail.

What This Means for Technology Founders

The appropriate patent strategy will depend on the technology and the commercial objectives of the business. But the Supreme Court decision and the UKIPO's subsequent practice notice create a clear reason to reconsider older assumptions.

Why Development Agreements Matter

Patent strategy should not be considered in isolation from the contracts under which the technology is being created.

Where employees, consultants, development agencies or specialist technical contractors contribute to a product, the agreements should deal with the ownership and transfer of relevant intellectual property.

Depending on the project, that may include:

• ownership of inventions and improvements;
• copyright assignment;
• background and foreground IP;
• confidentiality;
• disclosure of potentially patentable inventions;
• cooperation with patent applications;
• execution of further documents; and
• post-termination assistance.

These issues become especially important when a specialist developer leaves a project and another developer needs to take over. At that point, intellectual-property ownership, repository access, documentation, handover obligations and post-termination rights can become business-continuity issues as much as legal ones.

What To Do Next

• Review the technology portfolio: identify software or AI-enabled products where patent protection was previously dismissed without specialist assessment.
• Reassess patentability before disclosure: commercially important inventions should be considered before public disclosure, launch or publication potentially affects the available strategy.
• Audit development agreements: ensure employee, contractor and agency arrangements contain appropriate invention, assignment and cooperation provisions.
• Separate patent strategy from software ownership: establish whether the company actually owns or controls the underlying copyright and other intellectual property.
• Maintain technical records: development history, contributors, versions and technical decisions may become important when assessing both ownership and patentability.

Key Points

• The Supreme Court's decision in Emotional Perception AI has changed UK patent examination practice.
• The UKIPO expressly describes the change as immediate and particularly relevant to computer-implemented inventions.
• Software and AI inventions are not automatically patentable — but older assumptions about exclusion may need reconsideration.
• Patentability does not answer the separate question of who owns the software or other underlying IP.
• Development agreements should anticipate patent applications rather than trying to reconstruct ownership and cooperation obligations afterwards.