A unique ruling handed down by UK Supreme Court Judge Lord Kitchin on Wednesday declared that an artificial intelligence (AI) machine called DABUS cannot be granted a patent for anything it creates.
Creator Dr Stephen Thaler has been attempting to secure patent rights for DABUS since 2019, but the ruling from the UK’s highest appeals court has put an end to his campaign.
Lord Kitchin’s judgement read: “Dr Thaler has made clear that he is not an inventor; that his case is that the inventions described in the applications were made by DABUS; and that his right to the grant of patents for those inventions arises from his ownership of DABUS.
“For the purposes of these proceedings, the Comptroller could not and did not go behind Dr Thaler’s assertions of fact.”
While DABUS is not entitled to patent grants for anything it makes, DABUS itself is patented in the US under patent number US10423875B2.
According to the patent, the invention “relates generally to the fields of both artificial intelligence and machine consciousness and, more particularly, to a method and device for the unification and origination of knowledge within connectionist systems”.
Patent applications are pending before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the European Patent Office.
The UK Supreme Court’s judgement was a blow to Dr Thaler’s ambitions to have AI recognised as an inventor, but why does he advocate for AI rights?
He referred to the Artificial Inventor Project, a collective advocating for DABUS.
The Artificial Inventor Project “includes a series of pro bono legal test cases seeking intellectual property rights for AI-generated output in the absence of a traditional human inventor or author.
“It is intended to promote dialogue about the social, economic, and legal impact of frontier technologies such as AI and to generate stakeholder guidance on the protectability of AI-generated output”.
AIP member Ryan Abbott recently appeared before US Congress to advocate for a modification of the Patent Act to allow the protection of AI-generated inventions.
Proactive has approached Dr Thaler for a statement.