(ORDO NEWS) — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be the registered inventor of a U.S. patent, Reuters reports, although the issue could be subject to further appeal.
So all is not lost.
The litigation came from Stephen Thaler, who filed two patent applications in 2019, crediting an artificial intelligence program called “DABUS” as the inventor.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) denied the patents, and the district court agreed with that finding on appeal.
In August 2022, Thaler again filed an appeal over whether an AI could qualify as an “inventor” under US patent law. In response, the court ruled that the inventor must be an “individual”.
The main rationale for the recent rejection stems from the definition of “inventor” in the US Patent Law, which states that an inventor must be an “individual”.
The appeals court cited the Supreme Court, which defined “individual” as a person, according to Reuters.
This rules out the possibility of identifying the inventor of the US machine, animal, and software patent such as “DABUS”.
“DABUS” is a piece of software designed to create patentable inventions. This is a key element of Thaler’s plan to “challenge the international patent regime,” according to his website.
Thaler’s group has filed patent applications in at least 15 countries around the world with mixed results.
Australia appears to be moving in favor of validating one of the AI patents, and South Africa has issued a patent that lists DABUS as the inventor.
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