‘Dabus’ is not a name of a person, but of an artificial intelligence (AI) machine. Stephan Thaler named his AI machine Dabus. Thaler argues that Dabus is the inventor of a food container capable of changing shape and a flashing light. In 2018, Thaler filled two patent applications, but instead of using his own name he wrote down Dabus as the inventor. Last week, the court in London ruled against the applications as a machine cannot be seen as a “natural person”. Likewise, in the United States a similar appeal was rejected by the court. On the other hand, an Australian court and a South-African court permitted AI as an inventor.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘invent’ as follows: “to produce (something, such as a useful device or process) for the first time through the use of imagination or of ingenious thinking and experiment”.
With this definition in mind, we can outline the different perspectives of the courts.
Reasons to accept AI as an inventor:
- The AI uses experiments to come up with new ideas, this is in line with the aforementioned definition of ‘invent’. For example, AI can create art by combining patterns in various ways (Talagala, 2021).
- Moreover, humans could be breaking the law by claiming to be an inventor if they had no awareness of the AI software making this creation.
- Patent laws are originally designed for the industrial revolutions, they do not take modern technology into account. As a result, if an AI-generated invention cannot be protected by a patent system then companies are less willing to invest in these technologies. Additionally, owners (the humans that made the AI) want to keep the invention secret (Croft, 2021).
- What if an AI is created a long time ago by company A and recently created something because of new data fed by company B? Is the original owner of company A still the inventor or is it the employee(s) of the company B that supplied the data? What if the servers on which the AI ran is owned by company C, whose invention is it now?
Reasons to reject AI as an inventor:
- Patent laws in many countries require a natural person or persons to be an inventor in order to receive a patent. Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing from a UK court clearly formulated this as follows: “Only a person can have rights. A machine cannot.” (BBC, 2021).
- An AI resides in a file on the computer, so by simply copying this file you can create a second AI with the same capabilities (Talagala, 2021). So, how can we identify the right AI that generated the invention?
- Transfer learning takes place when a second AI can build upon the first and incrementally learn new things (Talagala, 2021). If this second AI is named as an inventor, should the first AI then actually be named a co-inventor? How do we know if the original AI contributed to the invention at all?
- In case we determine AI to be an inventor, then we can say that AI is identified as a natural person according to the law. Do other aspects that currently is attributed to humans then also apply to Artificial intelligence? For example, the rights of ownership (Talagala, 2021).
There are various perspectives on this topic and it is clear that the discussion is far from over as the AI technology continuously advances. So, what is your opinion on this topic? Do you think that AI can be named as an inventor?
By Jelmer van Slooten
References
BBC. (2021, September 23). AI cannot be the inventor of a patent, appelas court rules. Retrieved from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58668534
Croft, J. (2021, September 22). AI system cannot be named as the inventor on a patent, UK court rules. Retrieved from Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/1c79e834-f1c8-40ef-8d64-84e9cd00be47
Talagala, N. (2021, September 28). Can AI ben an inventor? Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishatalagala/2021/09/28/can-ai-be-an-inventor/?sh=64df8b0656db
