Welcome to Keltie.
There's been quite a bit of media
interest over the last few months
regarding whether an
AI entity can be considered to fulfill
the requirements of an inventor
in relation to filing a patent
application. My colleague Samantha
recently attended a talk on this and is
joining me to discuss some of the
interesting takeaways.
Sam, can you give us a summary of the
background behind this?
Absolutely Mark. The talk primarily
focused on the AI entity DABUS, developed by Dr Stephen Thaler
which is configured to simulate the
human brain
and is used to solve multiple different
problems in various fields.
As is usual in such cases a few patent
applications were filed in Europe
and the US in order to try and protect
the implementations in question.
These applications listed the AI entity
rather than its creator
as the inventor, however, both the US
and European patent offices have
concluded that it's not possible for an
AI entity to be listed as an inventor
since machines do not meet the
requirements for being a natural or
legal person.
Therefore the patent applications in
question don't meet the formal
requirements for naming an inventor
and they are hence considered
fundamentally deficient and have been
refused in the first instance.
I see, so presumably these applications
were intended to be a test case
to gauge the reaction of patent offices
to AI inventorship
since as technology progresses more and
more inventions will be developed
using AI entities? Yes
and particularly since the AI entities
that are being developed now
are increasing in complexity. In fact
during the talk it was discussed that
DABUS actually had the capability to
diverge
from the original parameters and scope
and to find new problems to solve and
new ways to do so.
So there's increasingly going to be a
question asked as to who is actually
entitled to the rights in the invention.
Was it the person who originally
programmed the AI's underlying
functionality
or the person who gave it the parameters
it needed and set the goals when
implementing it to solve the problem
or, as in this case, whether it was the AI
itself?
But isn't it all a bit academic? I
mean regardless of how versatile the AI
entity is
until one actually files its own
patent application with the patent
office it's probably fair to say it's
not the
AI that's entitled to the invention?
Yeah and when I see a patent application
filed by Skynet
that's when I'll start to get a bit
nervous! Practically though
this does raise a question about the
rights to the invention that's been
developed by the AI.
There are many companies which make
their money from licensing out results
of AI implementations.
For example, very topical at the minute,
drug discovery companies
that screen databases to develop new
drugs or repurpose existing ones.
A large amount of their value lies in
these discoveries
but if the rights in the invention were
to lie with the AI creator originally
then where does that leave those
companies?
I guess ultimately it sounds like it's
the degree of
skill and amount of parameter tweaking
of the AI to suit their specific needs
of the implementer that would determine
whether or not they or the original
creator owns the rights?
Yeah I think that's right it might
potentially require looking at what the
creator
designed the AI to do versus what the
implementer did
to make it to produce the results that
it did. This actually brings to mind a
Chinese proverb 画龙点晴 
"hua long dian jing" which embodies the
belief
or myth that when painting a dragon the
dragon was only brought to life once the
eye had been painted
and hence why the eye was always painted
last. So in an analogous way
it's the AI's creator or the painter
that's responsible for the living dragon
or whether it's the final implementer or
the eye drawer
who purchased the AI .Well that's
certainly a point of view
I hadn't heard before and in fact it
almost sounds more like an inventive
step or obviousness argument ..
looking at what went before and
determining from the incremental change
whether the eventual result was obvious
for the skilled person to arrive at.
Yes which brings us to another potential
effect of increasing AI use. 
How the skilled person is going to be
defined. At the moment
it's any person with a reasonable level
of knowledge, no inventive capability
but infinite time and resources but in
the future?
Maybe it'd be somebody using an AI
entity to try and solve
the problem at hand but how much leeway
would that person
or that AI entity have to trial
parameters
before it reached a stage of having had
to use inventive capability and hence
rendering the result
not obvious. Well ultimately it does
sound like that's something that's going
to have to be decided on a case-by-case
basis, though i understand that the
various DABUS applications 
are being appealed so perhaps we'll hear
more on this issue sooner rather than
later.
I hope everyone listening found this
discussion about AI inventors
interesting. Thank you Sam for
discussing this
with me today and until next
time, stay safe
and live long and prosper. Thanks Mark
Hello Samantha I'd like to file a patent application please
 
