Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot legally be named as an inventor to secure patent rights, the Supreme Court has ruled.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Britain’s highest court concluded that “an inventor must be a person” to apply for patents under current law.
The ruling comes after technologist Dr Stephen Thaler took his long-running dispute with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to the country’s highest court over the rejection of his bid to develop an AI he created as an inventor on two patents. to put on the list.
The US-based developer claims that the AI machine called DABUS autonomously created a food or drink container and a light beacon and that it is entitled to rights to its inventions.
But the IPO concluded in December 2019 that the expert could not officially register DABUS as an inventor in patent applications because he is not a person.
The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal in July 2020 and July 2021.
After a hearing in March, a five-judge panel of the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Dr. Thaler’s case.
The DABUS dispute centered on the way applications are made under the Patents Act 1977 legislation, and the judges were not asked to rule on whether the AI actually created its inventions.
Lord Kitchin, with whom Lords Hodge, Hamblen, Leggatt and Richards agreed, said the IPO was “right to decide that DABUS is not and was not an inventor of any new product or process described in the patent applications”.
He continued: “It is not a person, let alone a natural person, and no relevant invention has been invented.
“Accordingly, it is not and has never been an inventor within the meaning of the 1977 Act.”
The judge said the IPO was entitled to rule that Dr. Thaler should be considered “withdrawn” under the patent rules because “he failed to identify a person or persons whom he believed to be the inventor or inventors of the inventions described in the applications.”
The Supreme Court also rejected Dr. Thaler that he had the right to apply for patents for DABUS inventions on the grounds that he was the owner of the AI.
Lord Kitchin said that DABUS was “an unincorporated machine” and that Dr. Thaler “has no independent right to obtain a patent relating to such technical progress”.
He added that patent law “does not grant any person the right to obtain a patent for a new product or process created or generated autonomously, be it a machine, such as DABUS, let alone a person who claims that right purely on the basis of ownership. of the machine”.
The judge said the IPO had previously been right to emphasize that the case “did not concern the broader question of whether technical progress generated by autonomous machines powered by AI should be patentable”.
He added: “It is also not concerned with whether the meaning of the term ‘inventor’ should be extended, to the extent necessary, to machines powered by AI that create new and non-obvious products and generate processes that can be thought to offer advantages over products and processes that are already known.”
In a statement welcoming the ruling’s “clarification” of patent law, an IPO spokesman said this did not change the government’s previous conclusion following the public consultation that “there should now be no legal change to UK patent law ”, while noting that “many share the view that any future change must take place at the international level”.
He said the government was “keen to make Britain a global center for AI and data-driven innovation”, adding that the IPO recognized that “there are legitimate questions about how the patent system and indeed intellectual property more broadly should deal with this. AI) creations”.
“The Government will nevertheless monitor this area of law to ensure that the UK patent system supports AI innovation and the use of AI in the UK. We will continue to engage in discussions about AI inventors internationally to support UK economic interests,” the spokesperson said.
Robert Jehan, of law firm Williams Powell, who represented Dr Thaler at the High Court, said the judgment shows “how poorly current UK patent law supports the aim of making Britain a global center for AI and data-driven innovation”, and said “deficiencies” needed to be addressed “with urgency.”
He said: “UK patent law is inadequate and cannot provide protection for AI-generated inventions and as a result it can be expected that this could have a detrimental effect on the industry in the UK.”
Mr Jehan said the “lack of patent protection for AI-generated inventions” would push industries to look outside Britain and would act as a “disincentive to make inventions created by AI systems public”.
He added that “in the worst case scenario” the government’s decision not to update the law “could mean that inventions created by AI systems cannot currently be protected and controlled by patents in Britain”.
Patents, which provide protective legal rights, are granted for inventions that must be new and inventive and capable of being made or used, or for a technical process or method of doing something, according to government guidelines.
The case of Dr. Thaler reached the Supreme Court amid recent scrutiny of AI developments – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology – including their potential impact on education, the spread of misinformation and the professions.
During the March hearing, the technologist’s lawyers argued that patent law does not “exclude” non-human inventors and does not impose requirements on “the nature of the inventor.”
Mr Jehan told the judges in written arguments that the expert believes he “cannot truthfully be named as the inventor” of the DABUS creations.
“There is no prohibition in the law that prevents patents from being granted for inventions generated by AI systems,” Mr Jehan said.
But Stuart Baran, speaking on behalf of the IPO, said in written arguments that patent law requires “identifying the person or persons” believed to be an inventor.
He said at the time that the IPO had not received any other patent applications for AI-thought inventions, such as Dr. Thaler, labeling the dispute a “test case, rather than one driven by a pressing need in the real world.”
But Mr Baran said the IPO recognized that “this is a rapidly developing area of technology and the situation could change significantly in the future”.
He said that following a 2021 consultation, the government decided there was no evidence that UK patent law was inappropriate to protect inventions made using AI.