The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld the ruling of the district court and confirmed that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be recognised as a patent holder for inventions.
The case concerns two patent applications of Dr Stephen Thaler and his AI system called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Science). DABUS is a set of a source code or software and a computer programme which, according to Dr S. Thaler, autonomously generates inventions that are subject to patent protection, e.g. an emergency warning light or a food container that improves heat transfer. In the patent applications (16/524,350 “Neural Flame” and 16/524,532 “Fractal Container”), in the space for the name of the patent holder, Dr S. Thaler indicated that the invention had been generated by artificial intelligence.
When ruling on the case, the U.S. Court of Appeals stated that the U.S. Patent Act expressly defined ‘patent holder’ as a physical person, that is a human being. Therefore, AI does not meet the definition of the ‘patent holder’ and cannot be a subject of patent rights in the U.S. The fact that the appeal argues that patents on DABUS have been assigned and AI has been recognised as a patent holder for inventions in South Africa does not affect the final ruling on the case in the U.S.
To find out more about the case, please visit:
https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/2022/10/21/us-court-upholds-ruling-ai-patent-holders/