Patent Law's Current Stand on AI as an Inventor

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is present in every field nowadays from art, music, and finance to medicine. But there is still resistance to AI being officially accepted as an inventor. Let’s examine the recent developments regarding this topic.

AI-generated inventions in the last 4 years

 1. DABUS case:

In 2018, Stephen Thaler filed two European patent applications which he claimed DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) had invented. DABUS is an AI system that conceived 2 inventions for which Thaler filed patent applications in 17 jurisdictions listing it as the inventor. These were the first cases that challenged traditional patent laws of who can be recognized as an inventor. As Ryan Abbott, a University of Surrey law professor and author said, “We’re moving into a new paradigm where not only do people invent, people build artificial intelligence that can invent.”

In 2019, USPTO rejected the patent applications saying that only humans can be recognized as inventors under the Patent Act. Between 2018 and 2019, Thaler filed patent applications in other major patent offices such as the European Patent Office (EPO), United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), and IP Australia as well, but got rejected again for the same reason. However, in 2021, the South African Patent Office agreed to list the AI machine DABUS as an inventor. This is putting pressure on the US and Europe to re-assess their decision on the matter.

2.      Halicin:

In 2020, a machine learning algorithm at MIT helped researchers in developing a potent antibiotic, Halicin, which is effective against many pathogens. The computer model screened millions of chemical compounds to pick out potential antibiotics that kill bacteria using different mechanisms than those of existing drugs. Therefore, AI played a vital role in developing this drug.

Although they haven’t filed a patent for it yet, researchers say that it is a promising way of using computational methods to discover and predict the properties of potential drugs.

 

Read more: The future scenario of AI as an inventor. 

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