When the Invented Becomes the Inventor: Can, and Should AI Systems be Granted Inventorship Status for Patent Applications?

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence ("AI") systems have become vastly more sophisticated since the term was first used in the 1950s. Through the advent of machine learning and artificial neural networks, computers utilizing AI technology have become so advanced that a team of attorneys in the United Kingdom claim that their AI machine, DABUS, actually created patentable inventions. The team went so far as to file patent applications with the European Patent Office, the UK Intellectual Property Office, and the US Patent and Trademark Office. All applications named DABUS as the inventor. This sparked a heated debate within academic and legal communities that centered around whether AI can be an inventor, and, if so, what this might mean for the current state of patent law. This paper discusses the purposes of patent law through a brief look at its history, in an effort to highlight why patent law as it stands may no longer be one-size-fits-all. It considers the evolution of AI systems to explain how one might determine that a machine could be "creative" and therefore justifiably named as inventor. It surveys popular opinions and organizes them on a spectrum ranging from those who believe that patent law should stay as it is and that AI cannot be an inventor, to those who, more dramatically, advocate for the abolition of patent protection for AI inventions. This paper suggests that legislators be proactive in traversing this technological minefield rather than reactive, as technology will continue to outpace, and trample, law if left to its own machinations.