AI or artificial intelligence can do almost anything save for one thing — being granted patents. The U.S. Court rules that no robot should be deemed an inventor of anything.
Stephen Thaler is the brainchild of DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience), an artificial intelligence system that generates incredible ideas for valuable and viable products. DABUS had created two inventions before.
One was a kind of plastic food container that utilizes fractal geometry to make its shape adaptive. The second invention is a device that flashes light that attracts attention during emergency situations. The latter is claimed to be helpful in search and rescue operations. Both were filed for patents in the U.S. court but to no avail.
By definition, a patent is a grant from government agencies such as the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) that acknowledges an inventor for a particular, unique invention, process, or design. This acknowledgment lasts for a specific period, together with the complete invention disclosure.
However, Stephen Thaler had failed to grant a property right to the AI DABUS because of U.S. policies banning machines as “inventors.”
A few rejections of artificial intelligence recognition
Thaler had fought for the patent grant since 2018. But his efforts were shunned by the U.S. and U.K. courts. He filed for statements of inventorship for both of DABUS inventions. However, the IPO rejected his application and told him that a natural person must be listed as the inventor.
In his defense, Thaler doesn’t claim the inventions of both plastic food container and flashing light devices. So he took to the United Kingdom’s IPO his application for inventorship on October 17, 2018, and November 07, 2018. He stated that machines should have the rights to be inventors of useful products.
Both his applications were rejected because the claim didn’t adhere to the Patents Act 1977 requirements. Also, the IPO wasn’t satisfied with how Thaler had acquired rights that would be vested in an artificial intelligence system.
Thaler then re-appealed for a hearing in front of a “hearing officer,” but his appeal was once again rejected on December 04, 2019. The USPTO was also firm on its decision that only natural people can be deemed as inventors in the inventorship process.
Thaler took his applications to the High Court as well as the Court of Appeal.
According to Lord Justice Arnold, one of the U.K. panel representatives, the Patents Act 1977 only lists persons as “inventors.” Another U.K. panel representative Lord Justice Birss stated that while artificial intelligence isn’t considered a natural person, the law doesn’t state that a person can only be named an inventor.
More debates came from the U.K. panel claiming that if there is no name to be named as an inventor, then the patent grant would be contested.
Australia and South Africa think otherwise
The process of granting patents to a machine or artificial intelligence such as DABUS isn’t regulated worldwide. Australian and South African government agencies believe that machines have the rights to be granted patents the same as humans. Experts argued that the law is outdated and must be amended.
In July, South Africa released a ruling wherein machines can be granted inventorship rights. In the same month, Australia also released a similar order. But the United States law will not back down from their case.
One U.S. Judge said that granting patents to machines might be possible when artificial intelligence is so state-of-the-art that it adheres to inventorship requirements. However, that time hasn’t come yet, and it’s all up to Congress to decide if machines are worthy of being called “inventors.”
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