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posted by janrinok on Thursday July 07 2022, @08:11AM   Printer-friendly

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


Original Submission

Related Stories

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Asks If "AI" Can Create or Infringe Copyrighted Works 36 comments

USPTO Questions if Artificial Intelligence Can Create or Infringe Copyrighted Works

The USPTO is part of the US Department of Commerce and deals with various intellectual property rights issues. It previously raised questions on how AI technology impacts patent law and is now expanding this to copyright matters.

The consultation starts off by asking whether anything created by an AI, without human involvement, can be copyrighted. This can refer to any type of content, including music, images, and texts.

"Should a work produced by an AI algorithm or process, without the involvement of a natural person contributing expression to the resulting work, qualify as a work of authorship protectable under U.S. copyright law? Why or why not?" the Office asks.

The technology and code that makes any AI work obviously relies on human interaction, but USPTO's question is destined to raise a lively debate. Since it's expected that more and more creations will rely heavily on AI in the future, the US Government requests guidance on these issues.

In a follow-up question, the Office zooms in further still by asking what kind of human involvement is required to make something copyrightable. Yet another question deals with possible copyright infringements by an AI. Or in other words, can an AI pirate?

The comment period closes on Dec. 16.

See also: Academy of European Law Conference Report: "Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for Intellectual Property Law"


Original Submission

The USPTO Wants to Know If Artificial Intelligence Can Own the Content It Creates 37 comments

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates

And it wants the public to weigh in

The US office responsible for patents and trademarks is trying to figure out how AI might call for changes to copyright law, and it's asking the public for opinions on the topic. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice in the Federal Register last month saying it's seeking comments, as spotted by TorrentFreak.

The office is gathering information about the impact of artificial intelligence on copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property rights. It outlines thirteen specific questions, ranging from what happens if an AI creates a copyright-infringing work to if it's legal to feed an AI copyrighted material.

It starts off by asking if output made by AI without any creative involvement from a human should qualify as a work of authorship that's protectable by US copyright law. If not, then what degree of human involvement "would or should be sufficient so that the work qualifies for copyright protection?"

Other questions ask if the company that trains an AI should own the resulting work, and if it's okay to use copyrighted material to train an AI in the first place. "Should authors be recognized for this type of use of their works?" asks the office. "If so, how?"

The office, which, among other things, advises the government on copyright, often seeks public opinion to understand new developments and hear from people who actually deal with them. Earlier this year, the office similarly asked for public opinion on AI and patents.

"if it's really a push button thing, and you get a result, I don't think there's any copyright in that."


Original Submission

AI Denied Patent by Human-Centric European Patent Office 27 comments

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


Original Submission

USPTO Rejects AI-Invention for Lack of a Human Inventor 20 comments

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).


Original Submission

AI Computers Can’t Patent their Own Inventions -- Yet -- a US Judge Rules 11 comments

AI computers can't patent their own inventions — yet — a US judge rules

Should an artificially intelligent machine be able to patent its own inventions? For a US federal judge, the larger implications of that question were irrelevant. In April 2020, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled that only "natural persons" could be credited as the inventor of a patent, and a US court decided Thursday that yes, that's what the law technically says (via Bloomberg).

Not every country agrees with that direction. South Africa and Australia decided to go the other direction, granting one patent and reinstating a second patent application filed by AI researcher Steven Thaler, whose AI system DABUS reportedly came up with a flashing light and a new type of food container. Thaler is the one who sued the US in this case as well — he's part of a group called The Artificial Inventor Project that's lobbying for AI recognition around the globe.

On a patent application doesn't the inventor have to swear they invented it? [602.01 Naming the Inventor]


Original Submission

When AI is the Inventor Who Gets the Patent? 71 comments

When AI is the inventor who gets the patent?:

It's not surprising these days to see new inventions that either incorporate or have benefitted from artificial intelligence (AI) in some way, but what about inventions dreamt up by AI -- do we award a patent to a machine?

[...] In commentary published in the journal Nature, two leading academics from UNSW Sydney examine the implications of patents being awarded to an AI entity.

Intellectual Property (IP) law specialist Associate Professor Alexandra George and AI expert, Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor Toby Walsh argue that patent law as it stands is inadequate to deal with such cases and requires legislators to amend laws around IP and patents -- laws that have been operating under the same assumptions for hundreds of years.

The case in question revolves around a machine called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) created by Dr Stephen Thaler, who is president and chief executive of US-based AI firm Imagination Engines. Dr Thaler has named DABUS as the inventor of two products -- a food container with a fractal surface that helps with insulation and stacking, and a flashing light for attracting attention in emergencies.

For a short time in Australia, DABUS looked like it might be recognised as the inventor because, in late July 2021, a trial judge accepted Dr Thaler's appeal against IP Australia's rejection of the patent application five months earlier. But after the Commissioner of Patents appealed the decision to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, the five-judge panel upheld the appeal, agreeing with the Commissioner that an AI system couldn't be named the inventor.

AI Systems Can't Patent Inventions, US Federal Circuit Court Confirms 8 comments

'There is no ambiguity,' says judge:

The US federal circuit court has confirmed that AI systems cannot patent inventions because they are not human beings.

The ruling is the latest failure in a series of quixotic legal battles by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to copyright and patent the output of various AI software tools he's created.

In 2019, Thaler failed to copyright an image on behalf of an AI system he dubbed Creativity Machine, with that decision upheld on appeal by the US Copyright Office in 2022. In a parallel case, the US Patent Office ruled in 2020 that Thaler's AI system DABUS could not be a legal inventor because it was not a "natural person," with this decision then upheld by a judge in 2021. Now, the federal circuit court has, once more, confirmed this decision.

[...] The Patent Act clearly states that only human beings can hold patents, says Stark. The Act refers to patent-holders as "individuals," a term which the Supreme Court has ruled "ordinarily means a human being, a person" (following "how we use the word in everyday parlance"); and uses personal pronouns — "herself" and "himself" — throughout, rather than terms such as "itself," which Stark says "would permit non-human inventors" in a reading.

[...] According to BloombergLaw, Thaler plans to appeal the circuit court's ruling, with his attorney, Ryan Abbott of Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP, criticizing the court's "narrow and textualist approach" to the Patent Act.

Previously:
    UK Decides AI Still Cannot Patent Inventions
    When AI is the Inventor Who Gets the Patent?
    AI Computers Can't Patent their Own Inventions -- Yet -- a US Judge Rules


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Thursday July 07 2022, @09:20AM (4 children)

    by Opportunist (5545) on Thursday July 07 2022, @09:20AM (#1258659)

    Some sensible news out of the UK?

    Did hell freeze over or did Johnson finally leave?

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday July 07 2022, @11:36AM (2 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Thursday July 07 2022, @11:36AM (#1258667)

    It is bizarre I even have to keep pointing this out but - "AI" is just a tool, like any other software or hardware tool on a computer. The entire idea of assigning patent rights to an "AI" is so ridiculously absurd that whoever even proposed it should be laughed out of their job, and anyone who supported the idea needs mental help. You wouldn't assign patent rights to a screwdriver, a hammer, or a spreadsheet would you?

    Chances are, they are trying to avoid dealing with who REALLY came up with the original work. There are two aspects to this - 1, there may be a large number of people with whatever organization who worked together and directly used the "AI" as a tool to create this patent. Obviously whatever organization doesn't want to give credit where credit is really due. But this should already be an addressed issue as there are many huge projects that involve large numbers of people. 2: The way "AI" works is it takes the original work of many others outside of the organization and randomly throws it at canvas infinitely fast until it finds something that works. So, how do you credit that when that database may include data from every single invention ever made? They really don't want to address that, as then they would have to address that the patent their magic "IA" bullshit spat out may not really be all that original.

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:33PM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:33PM (#1258675)

      > You wouldn't assign patent rights to a screwdriver, a hammer, or a spreadsheet would you?

      But what if it's a screwdriver in a black box with "Really high tech stuff" written on the outside? Then it can acquire patents right?

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday July 08 2022, @09:36PM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Friday July 08 2022, @09:36PM (#1258986) Homepage

      And biological AIs (homo sapiens employees) are just tools too.

      Laws are made up.
      Rights are made up.
      Patent laws and rights are made up.
      It can be whatever we want them to be.
      We can choose to define legal personhood however we want.
      It can be DNA (possibly limited to sex and/or ethnicity as it has been historically) or some capacity of making decisions/sentience or something else entirely.
      Any preconceptions you have are just that; they will die when you die.

      "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
      and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
      eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with
      it."

      -- Max Planck

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:24PM (1 child)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:24PM (#1258674) Journal

    The whole point of patents were that a human or company would be granted a temporary monopoly on their idea in order to have time to recoup their development costs. If a computer program, an AI, is just making things up by sifting through information, why should those things be patentable? It seems we now have machines that can do the work for very little cost to produce ideas that can benefit all of humanity.

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:39PM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:39PM (#1258676)

      > making things up by sifting through information

      Someone needs to write a "score function", i.e. some criteria that designates *this* as better than *that*. Computer algorithms can't do that.

      Then one can get a computer to throw a whole load of initial conditions and determine the initial conditions that give the best score, where there are lots of different algorithms to determine how to iterate on the initial conditions (for example neural networks, genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, newton-raphson, excel RANDOM function, etc etc).

      The patent in this case goes to the person who can write a satisfactory score function and drive whatever optimisation routine to find a decent set of initial conditions. It is madness to ascribe a patent to the optimisation algorithm.

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