Artificial Intelligence Can’t Be Named as Inventor for Patents: UK Top Court

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Artificial intelligence programs can’t be named as an inventor for patents, the UK’s top court said in a crucial ruling that’s in line with decisions in the US and the European Union refusing to put machines on a near-equal footing with humans.

Britain’s Supreme Court rejected the request by Imagination Engines Inc. founder Stephen Thaler, who sought patents naming his AI machine DABUS as the inventor. Laws on patents require an inventor to be a natural person and “DABUS is not a person at all,” the judges said, dismissing Thaler’s appeal unanimously.

The ruling is not concerned with the broader question of whether technical advances made by an autonomous AI-powered machine are patentable, the judges said.

Thaler had tried registering the patent in multiple countries for a beverage container and a flashing light saying DABUS was the inventor. Thaler didn’t immediately respond to an email for comment. “DABUS is a sentient being,” he had previously said.

The UK’s “policy of prohibiting the grant of patents for AI-generated inventions acts as a major disincentive to innovation,” Thaler’s lawyers had said during the hearings.

The government’s lawyer had argued that allowing Thaler’s request would leave the UK as an outlier. If Thaler’s request is allowed, inventors in future could include “my cat Felix” or “cosmic forces,” the lawyer had argued.

Photo credit: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg