The Paper's trainee reporter Shao Wen
Recently, U.S. Federal Judge Leonie Brikema ruled that artificial intelligence cannot be listed as an inventor on a U.S. patent under the Patent Act. Leonie Brikema said in her ruling that the law only allows "individuals" to own patents, and that humans belong to "individuals" and machines are not.
The case was led by American artificial intelligence expert Steven M. Dr. Stephen L. THALER mentioned that he believes that the artificial intelligence system DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) produces Neural Flame (a warning light that flashes in novel and creative ways to attract attention) and Fractal Containers,(a type of beverage container based on fractal geometry) should be allowed to be listed as inventors in patents.
DABUS invented fractal food containers that facilitate stacking and robotic arm operation.
A warning light that mimics human neural activity through specific patterns and attracts more attention.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is a lawsuit filed by Thaller in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on August 6, 2021, after being rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Thaler argues that he applied for the patent in order to get a formal statement that patent applications should not be rejected without the participation of natural persons, and that "when AI meets the inventor's criteria, the patent application for an AI invention should list AI as an inventor."
In the lawsuit, Thaler argued that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should adopt the principle in a 1943 report of the National Patent Planning Commission that "patentability should be determined on the basis of objective contributions to technological progress, not subjectively determined by the process of completing the invention," prompting a shift in the U.S. patent system to a modern model.
Judge Brikema said, "The clear answer to whether AI machines qualify as creators under patent law is 'no.'" He believes that with the rapid development of science and technology, the degree of meticulous complexity of AI in the future may be comparable to the recognized inventor qualifications, but "such a moment has not yet come." When the time comes, it will be up to Congress to decide how to expand the scope of application of the patent law."
DABUS is an artificial, rather than biological, neural network AI system developed by American artificial intelligence expert Thaller that is capable of autonomously combining simple concepts into more complex concepts, triggering a series of memories and ultimately expressing the expected outcome of those ideas. In other words, DABUS has independent thinking ability and creative ability similar to the human brain, and through the large amount of data stored inside it and the intelligent computing system similar to the human brain, DABUS can independently form new inventions and create new inventions and produce creative results that are not expected by human beings.
Thaler recently filed patent applications with the Uk Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), the European Patent Office (EPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO), etc., calling their inventors "DABUS AI". Previously, this application was basically rejected in the UK and Europe on the grounds that DABUS was not a natural person. On 29 July 2021, the application was granted in South Africa, becoming the world's first patent for an AI inventor.
At the Australian Patent Office, the application was also rejected. But the patent applicant then sued the Australian Federal Court, and in a judgment issued at the end of July 2021, the Australian Federal Court ruled that DABUS was the patent inventor. The judge wrote in his judgment: "It seems to me that, according to the law, the inventor can be an artificial intelligence system or a device. This is in line with the provisions of the Patent Law and in line with the spirit of promoting innovation. At present, the Australian Patent Office is still appealing again.
In China, according to Longtian Intellectual Property Company, the Chinese patent agency in the "DABUS" case, the State Intellectual Property Office (CNIPA) recently issued a notice of amendment on the identity of the inventor of DABUS, stating that the inclusion of DABUS as an inventor does not comply with article 13 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Patent Law and section 4.1.2 of Chapter I of Part I of the Patent Examination Guide.
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