Also in Great Britain: AI cannot invent a patent

Also in Great Britain, the Court of Appeal has now ruled that artificial intelligence cannot be accepted as the inventor of a new patent. This is another setback for the campaign of the American entrepreneur and programmer Stephen Thaler, who is trying in different countries to get a neural network recognized as an inventor. The goal is for AI to be officially recognized as an inventor. Only AI developers should be granted ownership rights to patent claims. They have so far been more unsuccessful than successful, but the fact that the resistance is not entirely unanimous is shown by the fact that the last decision was made only with two votes to one.

Not a “person” in the sense of the law

Presently of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales Says the verdictA patent can only be granted to one person. Because after a systematic interpretation of the Basic Law, one can only come to the conclusion that only one person can be an “inventor”. Colin Pierce contradicts this, at least in part, in the minority vote. He agrees that the machine is not a “person” within the meaning of the relevant law, but that according to the law, the space allotted to it in the patent application can remain empty, and therefore there will be no inventor. Additionally, none of the questions would have been asked had Thaler not been a “nerd,” as he criticizes.

As the inventor, Thaler and his team want to record an AI called Dabus (“a device for independent booting of unified consciousness”) – but explicitly they don’t give it the property rights. Technology is a combination of neural systems that, like the brain, must be able to generate new ideas by changing the connections between mechanical synapses. The team responsible for this has filed two patent applications worldwide, with two very different successes: while the application failed in the European Patent Office (EPA) and only a few days ago in the USA, Dabbous was recognized as an inventor in Australia and South Africa became one patent issued.

(mo)