Nick White comments widely in the press on a Supreme Court decision on whether AI can be named as an inventor in a patent dispute
min readAn artificial intelligence (AI) system can't be registered as the inventor of a patent, Britain's Supreme Court has ruled. The court concluded that “an inventor must be a person” to apply for patents under the current law.
The decision was the culmination of American technologist Stephen Thaler's long-running British legal battle to get his AI, dubbed DABUS, listed as the inventor of two patents.
Thaler claims DABUS autonomously created a food and drink container and a light beacon and that he’s entitled to rights over its inventions. Tribunals in the US and the European Union have rejected similar applications by Thaler.
The U.K. Intellectual Property Office rejected Thaler's application in 2019, saying it's unable to officially register DABUS as the inventor because it’s not a person. After lower courts sided with the patent office, Thaler took his appeal to the Supreme Court, where a panel of judges has now unanimously dismissed the case.
Nick White, Partner in our Commercial Dispute Resolution team and an expert in intellectual property disputes commented on the decision, receiving widespread press coverage in titles such as The Independent, the Washington Post and Quartz. He said:
As AI systems continue to advance in sophistication and capability, there is no denying their ability to generate new and non-obvious products and processes with minimal, or perhaps even without any, ongoing human input,"
"Change may be on the horizon, but it will most likely come from policymakers, rather than the judges.
Read Nick's comments and the story in full here.
