05/06/2020
"Do You, Your Machine, or Both Own (AI)-Based Inventions?" - Maryam Imam, Counsel at Haley Guiliano LLP
The United States Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office, and Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in the UK have all decided that an AI machine cannot be a named (sole) inventor of a patent application. Here is the latest USPTO decision on a application with an AI machine-named inventor, DABUS. But this decision hardly ends the ongoing debate as to whether an machine-owned invention is patentable. In this case the sole was the machine. Can the decide differently when faced with a hybrid, machine-human, co-inventorship scenario?
The USPTO has published a petition decision explaining that, under current law, only natural persons may be named as an inventor in a patent application. The decision is available on the Artificial Intelligence page and the Final Decisions by the Commissioner for Patents page of the USPTO website. T...