Patent Law Needs Updating for Artificial Intelligence IP

[engine]

There's an interesting proposal that patent laws aren't covering artificial intelligence intellectual property.

This is worth a read because it's something faced by anyone holding patent, or someone with an AI-generated development.

Patent law is based on the assumption that inventors are human; it currently struggles to deal with an inventor that is a machine. Courts around the world are wrestling with this problem now as patent applications naming an AI system as the inventor have been lodged in more than 100 countries1. Several groups are conducting public consultations on AI and intellectual property (IP) law, including in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.

If courts and governments decide that AI-made inventions cannot be patented, the implications could be huge. Funders and businesses would be less incentivized to pursue useful research using AI inventors when a return on their investment could be limited. Society could miss out on the development of worthwhile and life-saving inventions.

[nature.com...]

[not2easy]

Same kind of issue has popped up on copyrights: [webmasterworld.com...]

[graeme_p]

This is nonsense and would require huge legal changes.

AI is a tool, anything it comes up with can be patented by the people who use it.

The only reason courts are going to refuse the patents is if it fails other tests (obviousness, advancing the state of the art, whatever) in which case it probably also required minimal cost and effort to do and it does not need the incentive of a patent.

You also cannot do this without making AIs legal entities like people or corporations. That is going to have a lot of consequences. Its also going to be difficult to define an AI for this purpose.

On top of that it opens the door to removing human intervention from the application so patent offices will be bombarded with lots of trivial patents automatically (if its cheaper to pay the fee than pay a person to weed out bad applications).

[engine]

Here's the challenge: The AI creates something, and the operator decides to patent it. This is the problem right now. If it's new, and not obvious, etc., what to stop someone else patenting the "something" and claiming it for themselves. Clearly, the AI can't submit the patent (yet, lol).

[DixonJones]

I think the problems go even deeper. What if AI creates something NOT original... since it leant on other content to do its magic. But it could be years before mopre AI systems are around to prove that the content was not original, by which time the patent is granted.

[graeme_p]

@DixonJones patenting something that is not original and waiting to see whether anyone challenges it is quite often how things work: patent offices will grant a lot of patent that do not really qualify and let the courts sort it out (varies from country to country, but its common).

A lot patents get granted and then overturned by the courts already, so it would really only be more of the same. Most software patents are ridiculous, so are a good many others, such as [pdfaiw.uspto.gov ]

[Kendo]

Patents are expensive and may need to be applied in each country... can be a very expensive exercise for a small business. But I have seen lots of patents taken out by those with enormous funding from stock markets. Some take out patents just for the sake of covering everything and on closer inspection, they can be quite ridiculous. How they get them approved begs belief.

One of our competitors read our product page which explains basically what our software did and how that worked in simple terms, then used that description for their patent. It was developed in Java which was alien to them and what our software did was also alien to them. But with $30 million to splash they weren't bothered.

[engine]

Sometimes, patents are granted for developments that just won't work, for all kinds of reasons, or patents that have little use. [patents.google.com...]
I doubt that aspect will change.

Something needs to change, so I welcome the idea proposed.

Perhaps AI will end up approving the patents!