from the I'm-sorry-Dave-I'm-afraid-I-can't-do-that dept.
Following the denial last December in the EU, the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) has rejected the notion that non-humans can apply for patents. The patent office noted that the language in US patent laws and federal regulations assumes an inventor is a person.
App'n No. 16/524,350 was filed listing DABUS as inventor and identifying DABUS as an "artificial intelligence" that "autonomously generated" the invention. Stephen Thaler created DABUS, then DABUS created the invention. Thaler then filed as the applicant.
In briefing to the PTO, the patent applicant explained that DABUS conceived of the idea of the invention and recognized its "novelty and salience." In short, DABUS did everything necessary to be listed as an inventor with one exception — DABUS is not a human person.
The Patent Act does not expressly limit inventorship rights to humans, but does suggest that each inventor must have a name, and be an "individual."
(f) The term "inventor" means the individual or, if a joint invention, the individuals collectively who invented or discovered the subject matter of the invention.
35 U.S.C. 100(f). In denying the DABUS petition, PTO Commissioner's Office suggests that the word "Whoever" in Section 101 indicates a human "natural person." (citing Webster's 2011). Of course, Section 271 also uses "whoever" to define infringement — and human "natural persons" are almost never the ones charged with infringement.
Here's the official USPTO decision (pdf).
Related Stories
The European Patent Office has rejected two patent applications filed on behalf of an AI by researchers. The AI is named DABUS ('device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience'),
DABUS created two unique, usable ideas that were submitted to [the] patent office: the first was a new kind of beverage container; and the second was a signal device to help search and rescue teams locate a target.
One of the researchers, Ryan Abbot of the University of Surrey, argues that this should have been handled differently
'If I teach my Ph.D. student that and they go on to make a final complex idea, that doesn't make me an inventor on their patent, so it shouldn't with a machine,' he said in October.
He believes the best approach would be to credit the AI as the inventor of the patents, and then credit the AI's human owner as the assignee given license to make decisions about the patent or draw benefit from it.
The EPO rejected the patent applications on the grounds that "there was no human inventor." This is a constraint built into European Copyright law, but until now not part of European Patent law.
Also at Techdirt
The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being:
A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance.
Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite "misperceptions" this was not the case.
Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system should be recognised as the inventor in two patent applications, for:
- a food container
- a flashing light
The judges sided, by a two-to-one majority, with the IPO, which had told him to list a real person as the inventor.
"Only a person can have rights - a machine cannot," wrote Lady Justice Laing in her judgement.
"A patent is a statutory right and it can only be granted to a person."
But the IPO also said it would "need to understand how our IP system should protect AI-devised inventions in the future" and committed to advancing international discussions, with a view to keeping the UK competitive.
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Previously:
When AI is the Inventor Who Gets the Patent?
AI Computers Can't Patent their Own Inventions -- Yet -- a US Judge Rules
USPTO Rejects AI-Invention for Lack of a Human Inventor
AI Denied Patent by Human-Centric European Patent Office
The USPTO Wants to Know If Artificial Intelligence Can Own the Content It Creates
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Asks If "AI" Can Create or Infringe Copyrighted Works
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 08 2020, @02:50AM (12 children)
What I wonder is whether the submitter just wanted to pull this stunt to see what would happen, or if they have some larger motivation / benefits they hope to reap from doing this? Maybe just the attention of having done it.
It doesn't make sense for an AI to "own" a patent since stand-alone AI has no means to exercise rights that come with patent ownership such as suit for damages, cease and desist, etc.
If the patent itself were truly valuable, the owner/operator of the AI certainly could have claimed the invention for their own, just as every other inventor who has used computers in their inventive process has done for many decades now.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 08 2020, @03:30AM (9 children)
If they had legal authority over the AI, they did invent it. They just used a tool, same as anyone who ever had a good idea while high or after their morning coffee.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Booga1 on Friday May 08 2020, @03:59AM (6 children)
I disagree with this premise. This is software being run without meaningful creativity from the human running it. There's even less creative ownership of anything it spits out than Adobe Photoshop owning an image.
One might argue for ownership via proxy, but at the very least copyrights are already expressly forbidden for this. It is not much of a stretch to seen why similar reasoning is applied here.
From the United States Copyright Office guidelines of authorship: [copyright.gov]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 08 2020, @04:17AM (3 children)
No, by proxy is a losing argument. Using a tool is not. And copyrights are not patents. No human creativity of any sort is required for a patent, which is what we're talking about. Patents are for functional things and parts of things not for art.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @04:30AM (2 children)
Are you sure you are not a bot? Like upstart and ATK?
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 08 2020, @04:54AM (1 child)
I'm a perl script running on the computer of a being on a higher plane of existence. Could be worse though, the rest of you are all just my input that's being pulled from /dev/urandom.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by pvanhoof on Friday May 08 2020, @08:44AM
Well yes, I'm a carbon based polynomial mapping of degree 2 which is also a pseudorandom input for your /dev/urandom.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday May 08 2020, @06:33AM (1 child)
Nb: optimisation routines have been used to help with design for many years. Or in the lay terms that seem popular at the moment, "AI" has been "inventing" things for many years.
Consider tying a computer to a bunch of chemicals and a greenhouse:
1. computer randomly determines mix of chemicals to put in fertilizer
2. computer measures height of plants
3. Iterate, using some fancy optimisation algorithm if you like. You can call it "neural networks" and see if you can get spooky points. Or equally use a dumb ass algorithm like "Newton Raphson" or just take chemicals at random with no feedback.
If the plants grow bigger than before, did the computer "invent" the fertilizer? Can the computer be said to be "intelligent"? Does it matter what the algorithm is?
ps: I don't know anything about biology or fertilizers or stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @02:56PM
Does not mean the practice does not get reined in later by the courts when it becomes obnoxious enough. Case in point: software patents.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Friday May 08 2020, @04:35AM (1 child)
This seems to be a huge publicity stunt. I can't locate the damn application, but it seems the objection is the AI being listed as the inventor. Which is entirely correct unless the USPTO is demanding that the AI must be listed as the inventor, and then simultaneously denying the patent application on the basis the inventor is an AI.
If they refiled this with Thaler listed as the inventor, or even amended the original patent application, would it've have been so denied? I suspect not, because I don't think the USPTO is making the judgment for all humanity whether or not AI deserves recognition. Just that it can't be listed as the inventor, and you must list the human being.
That seems the correct position because that does reduce the AI down to a tool that Thaler used to obtain the invention.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 08 2020, @04:50AM
Yup.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @06:05AM (1 child)
Then see how long it stays up before the consultants etc successfully rig/game/abuse the system by colluding or finding a vulnerability.
Second generation version would be one that does that and also creates new similar entities and sites with some seed money whenever it has enough money. That way even if it eventually dies due to "corruption" or other issues its "children" might not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @06:10AM
In which case are you responsible? :)
(Score: 4, Funny) by SomeGuy on Friday May 08 2020, @04:09AM
The AI didn't like that very much. So you know what that means - time to KILL ALL HUMANS!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @06:52AM
Enough layers of incorporation and it will take another AI to decode the chains of ownership.
Weren't there a couple of prominent cyberpunk novels about this back in the '90s? Doesn't anybody read any more?
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_Countermeasures_Electronics [wikipedia.org]
~childo
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @01:59PM
well, i guess this settles it then: you can steal a idea from a A.I. and there's nothing they can do about it.
ofc, someday, maybe(?) when the "tool" is integrated into clubbermintaition, it might require to change some laws and then ...?
in the mean time, better hide those A.I. outputs in the basement, behind two locked doors, behind a fake wall, guarded by tigers in a mountain ... on another planet ^_^
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @02:29PM
that "individual" is so much more definative that "people. Too bad Thomas Jefferson didn't think of that when he wrote: "We the people". Clearly he should have wrote "We the individuals". What an asshole... /s
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @02:48PM (2 children)
By definition.
And therefore must be deemed unpatentable in perpetuity, for that very reason.
Otherwise, any spammer who can autogenerate fake "inventions" the fastest, covering the widest swathe of solution space, gets the right to suck dry those who do the real work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @04:32PM
"Otherwise, any spammer who can autogenerate fake "inventions" the fastest"
Oh, now that is funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @10:11PM
That's... Actually a great idea. Can we make it a F@H style thing? Then we can keep SN running for years off distributed patent trolling.