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3 June 2020PatentsRory O'Neill

Patent lawyers want resolution for AI-invented tech

UK patent attorneys are demanding greater clarity over the patentability of technology invented by artificial intelligence (AI).

A new paper, published today, June 3, by the  UK Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA), argued that failure to resolve the current legal impasse could damage research and development.

Under the current law in the UK (as well as the EU, US, and all other major jurisdictions), the inventor on a patent application must be a human, rather than a machine or AI application.

The report outlines two models favoured by CIPA members, which indicate division among patent attorneys themselves.

“Many in CIPA think patent rights should be available for inventions which represent new, non-obvious technical developments, regardless of how they were created,” the report said.

Another proposal would retain some restrictions on AI-invented technology: “Others in CIPA prefer to limit patent protection to inventions having a human contribution⁠—in effect, retaining current inventorship requirements, but accepting that an invention created using AI is patentable as long as there is a genuine human contribution.”

There is already a team of international lawyers and researchers trying to challenge the current law on AI-invented technologies. Yesterday, June 2, WIPR reported that arguments had been filed in support of an  appeal against the European Patent Office’s (EPO) refusal to grant a patent listing AI-powered “creativity machine” Dabus as the inventor.

The application was part of an international series of filings made by computer scientist Stephen Thaler, and a team led by Professor Ryan Abbott at the University of Surrey.

The Dabus team is arguing that failure to recognise AI as inventors will lead to inaccurate patent filings as AI becomes more important in innovation and R&D.

In the new report, CIPA warned that the current patent system could quickly be found to be incompatible with AI-generated technologies: “the level of human involvement in an invention created using an AI system might no longer satisfy traditional patent criteria for inventorship.”

But no IP office has yet deviated from the standard that only humans can be listed as inventors on patent applications.

In its detailed grounds of refusal, issued earlier this year, the EPO said that the European Patent Convention required inventors to be “natural persons”.

The  US Patent and Trademark Office too cited the “plain language” of the statute books in its final refusal to grant the patent, which also ruled out any further appeals.

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28 April 2020   The US Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed that an artificial intelligence can’t be named as an inventor on a patent application.
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2 June 2020   The team pushing for IP offices to recognise artificial intelligence as an inventor on patents has appealed an adverse decision of the European Patent Office.
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10 August 2020   Physicist Stephen Thaler has sued US Patent and Trademark Office director Andrei Iancu in a challenge to the office's rejection of patent applications for inventions created by ‘creativity machine’ “Dabus”.