A lamp that flickers to the rhythm of brain activity and a cleverly interlocking food package based on a fractal, an infinitely repeating mathematical figure. American computer scientist Stephen Thaler reported these inventions to international patent offices in 2018.
So far, nothing special: organizations such as the European Patent Office (EPO) receive tens of thousands of requests every year to approve innovations.
But Thaler’s request was different. Not his own name, but that of the AI system Dabus he developed, was listed as inventor on the application. Patent examiners worldwide wondered whether this was actually possible. The conclusion was always the same. An inventor must be a human beingartificial intelligence is just a tool to arrive at the innovative idea.
Yet Thaler is not giving up hope yet. He has ongoing appeals and lawsuits in several countries to have his AI model approved as an inventor. According to him, these are not about setting precedents within current legislation on intellectual property, which barely takes artificial intelligence into account. In an interview with the British-American magazine Wired Thaler stated recently that he is primarily concerned with human acceptance of generative artificial intelligence, which can come up with innovative ideas: “There is a new species on Earth and it is called Dabus.”
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Dabus not as an inventor
On Wednesday, Thaler’s hopes for recognition suffered another blow. Following the Australian and New Zealand Supreme Court, the British Supreme Court also decided that Dabus should not be listed as an inventor on the form. Well emphasized the judge stated that he had not made a judgment on the question of whether the concept of ‘inventor’ should be extended to generative AI models that invent new products and concepts.
Thaler’s lawyers responded with resignation to the ruling, which they say shows that British patent law is currently not equipped to deal with inventions made by artificial intelligence.
The call for good legislation is part of a broader discussion taking place within the world of intellectual property about how AI innovations should be viewed. For example, the growth of AI models such as those from OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta leads to questions about the ‘input’ of these machines. What information are they trained with so that they can ‘think’ for themselves? What about the rights of those from whom this information comes? And if the invention arises from a bundling of other people’s information, can the novelty be fully attributed to an AI model? These are questions to which the European AI Act adopted at the beginning of this month does not yet have a clear answer.
Thaler is now taking a different route at the European Patent Office. After a German judge ruled at the end of 2021 that AI-generated ideas are patentable, as long as a real person is designated as the inventor, the American decided to resubmit the patent application for the innovative food packaging. This time not with Dabus, but with Thaler as ‘alleged inventor’ on the form. According to the American, identifying oneself as an inventor would be tantamount to providing false information. The application procedure is still ongoing.
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