British Supreme Court Rejects Requests By US Computer Scientists To Register AI Patents

JAKARTA - A US computer scientist on Wednesday, December 20, lost his efforts to register a patent for a discovery made by his artificial intelligence system in a historic UK case regarding whether artificial intelligence can have patents.

Stephen Thaler is seeking to obtain two patents in the UK for the discovery it says was created by a "creitation machine" called DABUS.

His efforts to register a patent were rejected by the UK Intellectual Property Rights Office (IPO) on the grounds that the inventors should be in the form of humans or companies, not machines.

Thaler appealed to the British Supreme Court, which on Wednesday rejected his appeal unanimously on the grounds that "an inventor should be human" according to British patent law.

Judge David Kitchin stated in a court's written ruling that the case "is not related to a broader question of whether the technical progress generated by machines operating autonomously and supported by artificial intelligence should be patentable".

Thaler's lawyers said in a statement that the ruling "defines that British patent laws are currently completely unsuitable for protecting autonomous-generated discoveries by artificial intelligence machines and consequently truly inadequate in supporting industries relying on artificial intelligence in the development of new technologies".

The IPO spokesman welcomed the decision "and the clarification he gave about the law as it is related to the granting of patents for the creation of artificial intelligence machines".

They added that there are "legitimate questions about how patent systems and even broader intellectual property should handle such creations" and the government will continue to review these legal areas.

Thaler earlier this year lost a similar effort in the United States, in which the Supreme Court refused to hear the challenge of the rejection of the US Patent Office and Trademark to patent the discovery made by its artificial intelligence system.

captivated Parsons, partner at law firm Browne Jacobson who was not involved in the case, said the UK Supreme Court's decision was not surprising.

"This decision at the moment will not have a significant impact on the patent system," he said. "That's because, for now, artificial intelligence is a tool, not an agent. I hope it will change in the medium term, but we can deal with the problem when it emerges."

Rajvinder Jagdev, an intellectual property partner at Powell Gilbert, said the ruling followed a similar decision by courts in Europe, Australia, and the US and had "provided certainty that inventors should be human."

However, he added: "This ruling does not prevent a person from using artificial intelligence to design discovery - in such a scenario, it will be possible to file a patent provided that the person is identified as the inventor."

In a separate case last month, the London High Court determined that artificial neural networks could obtain patent protection in British law.