PT Journal
AU Matulionyte, R
TI AI as an Inventor: Has the Federal Court of Australia Erred in DABUS?
SO JIPITEC
PY 2022
BP 99
EP 112
VL 13
IS 2
DE Artificial Intelligence; DABUS; Inventor
AB The emergence of advanced Artifi¬cial Intelligence (AI) technologies has caused an inter¬national debate as to whether inventions generated by AI technology without human intervention should be protected under patent law and who should own them. These questions have been discussed in a re¬cent Federal Court of Australia decision in Thaler v Commissioner of Patents. In that judgment, Beach J recognised that some AI has the ability to auton¬omously invent and that such AI-generated inven¬tions could be protected under patent law. His Hon¬our held that, in such instances, an AI system could and should be listed as an inventor in a patent appli¬cation. This article challenges the decision by argu¬ing that, even in the case of the most sophisticated AI systems, these systems are not autonomous in the inventive process as humans provide significant contributions to the very system that leads to the in¬ventive output. Secondly, I contend that the discus¬sion on the need of patent protection for AI-gener¬ated inventions (if it were possible at all) is misplaced and not sufficiently comprehensive. Finally, the ex¬panded application of the Patents Act 1990 (Cth), and especially s 15(1), to accommodate ‘AI inventors’, is an over-reach that is not consistent with the current law. The article recommends that the AI inventorship question should be decided not by courts, but by a policy making body and all interested stakeholders should be engaged in the discussion on this impor¬tant matter.
ER