AI inventor bid crashes in Australia
Court’s decision has “negative real-world impact” says AI project lead | Federal Court of Australia follows similar decisions elsewhere by eventually rejecting the named inventor.
Scientist Stephen Thaler has lost his bid to appeal against a ruling denying patent inventorship to an artificial intelligence (AI) system called DABUS.
The High Court of Australia refused Thaler’s application for leave to appeal against a decision made by the Federal Court of Australia in April this year.
The Federal Court had overturned its prior ruling that AI can be a named inventor on a patent application, striking down last year’s win for Thaler and his ongoing AI inventorship campaign.
Thaler had applied for a patent called “food container and devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention” and gave the name of the inventor as DABUS. Tahler was the creator of the AI system.
Although Thaler secured an early win before the Federal Court—with the court finding that an AI can be a named inventor but that non-humans cannot apply for patents—this was subsequently overturned by the court in April.
At the time, a five-judge panel concluded that Thaler’s “DABUS” AI didn’t comply with the necessary criteria for inventorship outlined in Australian patent law.
Thaler’s application for special leave to appeal against the decision was refused with costs.
In a LinkedIn post, Ryan Abbott, who leads the University of Surrey team behind the DABUS project, said that the decision to reject the appeal had “substantial negative real-world impact”.
"It discourages the development and use of inventive AI in R&D, particularly in fields requiring significant financial investment such as drug discovery,” said Abbott.
However, he noted that Australia is the only jurisdiction where the team have filed patent applications to issue a final, non-appealable denial.
“Hopefully, courts in other jurisdictions will decide the matter differently in the context of national legislation and consistently with the policy goals of patent law,” he said.
Eyes on UK’s Supreme Court
In August, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that DABUS cannot be listed as the inventor of two patents, as there was no “ambiguity” in the fact that the patent law requires an “inventor” to be a “natural person”.
Thaler then requested a rehearing of the matter, either before a new panel or before the full Federal Circuit. However, this was denied in October.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the UK Supreme Court has confirmed it will hear the appeal over the DABUS patent inventorship bid.
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