Artificial intelligence cannot be an ‘inventor’ registering a patent for a novel product, ruled the High Court in a landmark case. An inventor must be a person. The immediate consequence is that any product developed solely by artificial intelligence cannot be patented.
Dr Stephen Thaler took a test case to the High Court seeking a patent for his new type of food container. Designed to hold liquids, it has fractal walls, allowing it to interlock with other containers.
He has developed an AI system which he calls DABUS: Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience. When submitting the patent application, Dr Thaler said the final product was the result of unsupervised generative learning by DABUS with no contributions from himself or anyone else. Naming himself or any other person as the inventor would leave the patent open to challenge.
The Patent Act does not specifically state that an inventor has to be a person, Justice Palmer said. But New Zealand patent legislation in its various guises since 1860 has been predicated on the assumption that the inventor is a person. The most recent patent legislation in 2013 was enacted at a time when the existence of and capabilities of artificial intelligence were known.
Any expansion of the definition of ‘inventor’ to include artificial intelligence is for parliament to decide, Justice Palmer said. The UK government has decided not to expand the definition when reviewing its patent legislation, he noted.
The court was told Dr Thaler has named DABUS as the inventor in similar patent applications in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. In each case, patent registration was refused. Dr Thaler is based in the US.
Thaler v. Commissioner of Patents – High Court (17.03.23)
23.033