In 2018, an AI system called DABUS (short for “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience”) created two inventions. DABUS was created by researchers to generate ideas and then determine which are the most novel, useful, or valuable. This resulted in DABUS creating two inventions without human intervention – an improved beverage container and a “neural flame” device used in search-and-rescue missions. The system creator Stephen Thaler filed patents for the inventions and listed DABUS as the inventor. However, his application was rejected.
Looking at the current law, the Patent Act refers to authors or inventors as patent owners. Only a natural person – so not a corporation or system – are described as possible inventors. Some academics believe that this law is outdated, and some courts agree with this. For example, Australian and South African courts decided that AI systems can be recognised as an inventor.
In the United Kingdom, a judge wrote: “In my judgement it is clear that, upon a systematic interpretation of the 1977 Act, only a person can be an ‘inventor’.” The United States court agrees with the current law, stating: “As technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication such that it might satisfy accepted meanings of inventorship. But that time has not yet arrived, and, if it does, it will be up to Congress to decide how, if at all, it wants to expand the scope of patent law”.
What do you think, is AI developed enough to be the rightful owner of a patent, or do people need to keep the rights of intellectual property?
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58668534
https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2019/09/when-innovation-invents
Hi Marloes,
Thank you for this insightful article! It was quite interesting to know that an AI system created two inventions already.
I think in general the significant developments in technology, and also artificial intelligence (AI) systems urges the governments to make critical changes in the regulations for privacy and security reasons. However, it was interesting to know that these inventions made by DABUS provoked the regulations for patent rights.
In my opinion, I think his application could be accepted as he holds the patent rights for invention of DABUS itself. Although AI system created these inventions, the creator of DABUS was still Stephen Thaler. So, we should also make changes in the regulations regarding the patent rights for AI, as the further developments in AI will most likely increase number of inventions in the future.
Wow! Super interesting to read that AI actually came up with two inventions. However, it seems odd to me that an AI system can be the owner of a patent. In the end, the financial gains from the invention will go to either a corporation or a person. Moreover, the AI is also developed by a person or corporation. In that way, the invention done by an AI system is indirectly done by the corporation or person. Therefore, the patent should belong to the person or corporation. Next to this, I would deem it likely that assigning a patent to an AI system would lead to legal issues, as an AI system cannot start a lawsuit in the case that someone would violate the patent.
I think that the motivations offered by the EPO (European Patent Organisation) for rejecting the application for this patent are interesting to consider. In fact, the EPO has declared that the European Patent Convention and its regulations clearly require that the name of the inventor be specified in the application. These formal requirements allow inventors to exercise their rights. On the contrary, things (or Ai’s machines, as in the case in question) have no rights to exercise, because they do not have legal personality. According to the EPO, one cannot resort to the legal fiction of qualifying the Dabus machine as an employee of the patent owner, or the latter as the successor in title of the machine, once again because an AI system has no legal personality and cannot, consequently, being the creator of any alleged invention, nor can it transfer the related rights to third parties. The EPO concludes by clarifying that the designation of the inventor is a formal requirement that a patent application must satisfy: the evaluation of these formal requirements is independent and irrelevant with respect to whether or not the substantial requirements for the patentability of the invention are applied (for example, the novelty requirement), which the EPO did not investigate, having stopped at an earlier step.
It seems to me that we are still far from the time when we can assign a juridical personality to machines, Therefore, I tend to agree with the EPO’s decision.