The US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that inventors must be human, another blow to computer scientists who believe AI machines should be recognized as inventors under patents.
Bloomberg reports that computer scientist Stephen Thaler is facing another setback in his efforts to recognize artificial intelligence machines as patent inventors. The US Federal Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the term “individual” in the Patent Law refers only to humans, meaning AI was not recognized as the inventor of a patentable invention.
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The decision is in line with that of courts in the European Union, United Kingdom and Australia, which also disagreed with Thaler’s argument. Only one court has ruled in favor of Thaler’s argument, a South African court said that AI could be a patent inventor.
The Federal District is generally considered the highest court in U.S. patent matters, unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes. According to his attorney Ryan Abbott of Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP, Thaler plans to appeal in the supreme court.
Abbott said the Federal District took a “narrow and textual approach” to the Patent Law. “This ignores the purpose of the Patent Law and the fact that AI-powered inventions can no longer be patented in the United States,” he said. “This is an outcome with very negative social consequences.”
Thaler isn’t the only computer scientist to advocate for AI rights in recent years. Breitbart News recently reported that Google fired an engineer, Blake Lemoine, who last month explained the theory that Google’s AI language system is intelligent and has its own “preferences” and should be respected as an individual. Google and several AI experts denied Lemoine’s claims, and the company confirmed that Lemoine was fired.
Lemoine told BBC News he is currently seeking legal advice and cannot comment further. Google said in a statement that Lemoine’s claims about the Language Model for Speech Applications (LAMDA) are “not completely proven” and the company has been working with Lemoine “for months” to clarify this.
“Therefore, it is unfortunate that Blake, despite his long interest in this issue, chose to continue to violate explicit employment and data security policies that include the need to protect product information,” the statement said.
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Source: Breitbart
