Only people can get patents. And for good reason. That is, a patent grant (a temporary monopoly granted by the government) “Promote the advancement of science and the useful arts.” like a monkey Photos cannot be copyrightedThe software cannot be patented because it does not incentivize the monkey to take more pictures, it does not respond to incentives.
Stephen Thaler did not receive this memo because he has spent years obtaining copyrights and patents on AI programs. And people seem intrigued by the idea of AI getting intellectual property rights. Thaler can get Important press attention By facilitating a false legal battle to obtain a patent, he lots of lawyers I am interested in helping him around the world.
Thaler created an AI program he called DABUS and filed two patents claiming DABUS as the sole inventor. These applications were duly denied by the United States Patent Office. rejected again by a district court judge when Thaler sued to obtain a patent; and rejected again by a panel of appellate judges. Still Not Satisfied March, Thaler petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take his case. He received support from unexpected quarters, Including Lawrence LessigAs noted in the Techdirt post on the Thaler case.
Fortunately, on April 24, 2023, the Supreme Court refused to drop Thaler’s case. This should put an end to his claims regarding his AI patent application.
Thaler filed U.S. Application Nos. 16/524,350 (describing “Neural Flame”) and 16/524,532 (describing “Fractal Container”) in 2019 and listed “DABUS” as an inventor in both applications. He filed an inventor’s affidavit on behalf of DABUS and a document assigning all of DABUS’s invention rights to himself.
“Thaler contends that he did not contribute to the conception of these inventions, and that anyone skilled in the art could use the DABUS artifacts to put their application ideas into practice.” The Federal Circuit’s opinion explains.
However, patent law The inventor is an individual,‘ means ‘person, person’ in Supreme Court precedent.
Ideas for AI patents are coming out one after another
The problem of AI inventions will never go away. Because we have a dedicated aficionado and a dedicated lobby of patent attorneys who want to work for them, and we want to keep talking about it. The Patent Office is currently Collection of public comments Regarding the possibility of the second AI invention, Already doing so in 2019.
After all, who would want an AI to have inventor rights? Amicus Brief from Chicago Patent Attorney GroupThey upheld Thaler’s case to bring DABUS to the Supreme Court.
Ownership can be divided in different ways to different extents among the entities that developed the AI, provided training data to the AI, trained the AI, and invented it using the AI. increase. In some cases, such a contract would result in him owning 100% of the AI-generated inventions to one entity, although other ownership assignments are possible.
The endless negotiations over ownership of some ideas may be a benefit to the lawyers involved in those negotiations, but a loss to everyone else.
You don’t need a property rights system to manage everything. In fact, when we do that, the public loses. Thousands of human-created software patents are already a mess, causing serious problems for developers and users of real-world software. Applications that attempt to grant exclusive rights to computer programs created by AI are a bad idea. That’s why we’re awarding his Thaler patent application Stupid Patent of the Month.
