Australian Court Rules an AI Can be Considered an Inventor on Patent Filings
upstart writes:
Australian court rules an AI can be considered an inventor on patent filings:
In a case brought by Stephen Thaler, who has filed and lost similar cases in other jurisdictions, Australia's Federal Court last month heard and decided that the nation's Commissioner of Patents erred when deciding that an AI can't be considered an inventor.
Justice Beach reached that conclusion because nothing in Australia law says the applicant for a patent must be human.
As Beach's judgement puts it: "... in my view an artificial intelligence system can be an inventor for the purposes of the Act.
"First, an inventor is an agent noun; an agent can be a person or thing that invents. Second, so to hold reflects the reality in terms of many otherwise patentable inventions where it cannot sensibly be said that a human is the inventor. Third, nothing in the Act dictates the contrary conclusion."
The Justice also worried that the Commissioner of Patents' logic in rejecting Thaler's patent submissions was faulty.
"On the Commissioner's logic, if you had a patentable invention but no human inventor, you could not apply for a patent," the judgement states. "Nothing in the Act justifies such a result."
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