AI systems cannot be patent inventors
The UK Supreme Court has handed down its long-awaited decision in a legal test case examining whether a UK patent can be granted if an artificial intelligence (AI) system is named as the sole inventor1. The Supreme Court unanimously held that a human inventor is required, and that a person who is the owner, creator, and user of the AI system, but not the actual inventor of the inventions, is not entitled to a patent.
Background
The case relates to two inventions that are reported to have been created by an AI system, with no human involvement. The AI system, known as ‘DABUS’ (short for ‘Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’) was developed by Dr Stephen Thaler using neural network technologies. DABUS apparently created two separate inventions for a fractal-based design for a food container and an emergency light system.
Dr Thaler filed patent applications for these inventions listing DABUS as the sole inventor. The patent applications were rejected by the UK Intellectual Property Office in 2019, and both the UK High Court and Court of Appeal refused appeals, all on the basis that (i) UK patent law requires a human inventor to be named; and (ii) there is no existing mechanism through which Dr Thaler could have become entitled to patents resulting from inventions independently created by an AI system.
Decision
The Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that a human inventor is required for UK patent applications to proceed, even if the applicant believes that the invention was created solely by the AI system. This decision aligns the UK position with the view of most patent offices and courts across the world, including the European Patent Office, the US and Australia.
The Supreme Court also considered whether an owner, creator and user of the AI system is entitled to a patent for an invention created by the AI system. The Supreme Court rejected this proposition; there is no mechanism under UK law under which the rights to the inventions could have transferred to the owner, creator and user of the AI system.
Comment
Today’s decision provides confirmation from the UK’s highest court on the availability of patent protection for inventions said to have been autonomously created by AI systems. However, the Supreme Court did not consider whether the ‘DABUS’ AI system did in fact independently created the inventions in question. As it is not clear whether there are any AI systems which are genuinely capable of developing inventions without any human involvement, today’s decision may remain of limited applicability. However, given the striking speed at which the AI field is advancing – as seen in developments of generative AI technologies in the past year – the issue of AI-generated inventions may need to be addressed again in the future. If the UK government is serious in its aspiration to establish itself as an ‘AI superpower’, legislative intervention may be required to allow patentability of inventions which are independently created by AI systems.
