[HN Gopher] AI cannot be the inventor of a patent, appeals court... ___________________________________________________________________ AI cannot be the inventor of a patent, appeals court rules Author : belter Score : 94 points Date : 2021-09-24 09:04 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com) | rozim wrote: | I have wondered if robots can own assets for example if there's a | robot that walks around picking up aluminum cans and then taking | them to a recycling center and getting paid for them, can it | deposit that money in a bank account and be said to be the owner | of the assets. | dbtc wrote: | I think there's a difference between legal and practical | ownership. | | Cryptocurrency is basically designed for this. | HPsquared wrote: | Robots are always owned by some human entity though, including | their bank account. It could just be another legal "virtual | person" like a corporation. | whbrown wrote: | No need to speculate, how about crows trained to pick up | cigarette butts? | | It's probably up to the bank, and of course rather challenging | for them to pay their income taxes as we all must ... | wizzwizz4 wrote: | There's a minimum threshold, and I don't think crows would | earn enough to end up paying it. But if they did... surely | there's some mechanism for dealing with individuals who have | the capacity to provide significant value to society (=1 get | paid a lot), but lack the capacity to do government | paperwork. | | 1: for the sake of argument, assume this | spaceman10 wrote: | This is a corporation with extra steps. | HMH wrote: | This very much reminds me of "The Measure of a Man" [1], one of | my favorite episodes of Star Trek: TNG. Just as in this actual | case AI rights are discussed, albeit things are a little more | dramatic than a ruling about patents. It has to be decided | whether to Data, an android/machine, should be granted the same | rights as to a person or if it is fine to dismantle him for | research purposes without asking. | | While I agree with the current ruling in the UK, this statement | does not sit too well with me: | | > "Only a person can have rights. A machine cannot," wrote Lady | Justice Elisabeth Laing in her judgement. | | In my opinion this sets a bad precedent in case we ever achieve | artificial general intelligence (AGI) [2], which I think is | perfectly possible, especially considering that we humans are | nothing but complicated biological machines. And I think an AGI | should very much be considered a person. That's why I think the | way how a US judge in a prior cases put it is more agreeable: | | > As technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial | intelligence reaches a level of sophistication such that it might | satisfy accepted meanings of inventorship. | | > But that time has not yet arrived, and, if it does, it will be | up to Congress to decide how, if at all, it wants to expand the | scope of patent law. | | But admittedly this is still all very hypothetical as I don't see | AGI happening in the near future and for now there is no real | problem. | | [1]: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_%28Star_T... | | [2]: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc... | chime wrote: | > > "Only a person can have rights. A machine cannot," wrote | Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing in her judgement. | | The fight will then be to get AGI classified as a person. If a | corporation can have personhood, it is not impossible for AGI | to have the same. | rhino369 wrote: | Corporate personhood is a misunderstood issue. They aren't | treated like a natural person. Corporations for example can't | be inventors on a patent either. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > If a corporation can have personhood, it is not impossible | for AGI to have the same. | | The basis for corporate personhood is that it is made up of | humans. The benefits of a corporation flow to real humans. | Real humans actually direct how a corporation will be run. In | the event of crimes, the corporate veil can be pierced to go | after the real humans behind it. | | The "personhood" of corporations flows from the "personhood" | of the humans behind it. | | Imagine a world where corporations held no rights at all. For | example, while an individual human had the right to freedom | of the press, a corporation like the New York Times would not | have that right. | GauntletWizard wrote: | Despite the consistent misinformation around it (very | frequently flat out lies), Corporate Personhood does not mean | that corporations are people. Corporate Personhood only | acknowledges that corporations are groups of people, and that | if it would be legal to gather a large group to do something, | doing so under the auspices of a corporation is also legal. | That is the precedent that Citizens United set - That it is | as legal to make political contributions and endorsements as | a corporation as you would as a rotary club. You can argue | that the rotary club shouldn't be allowed to make | contributions - And I would agree with you. I in fact, | encourage it. People should not be able to hide their | political contributions through entities like Trade Unions, | which are actually the most pertinent part of that class. | williamtrask wrote: | I'm very grateful for rulings like this. I think it's important | that we all remember that progress isn't the goal. Humans | flourishing is the goal. AI shouldn't be personified and add even | more actors with legitimate ability to compete for resources. | amelius wrote: | Perhaps AI can't get a patent, but AI can still generate prior | art and thus invalidate patents. | lordlic wrote: | Conscious beings flourishing is the goal, whether they be human | or AI. | | That might seem like a fine distinction, but the importance | going forward is stark given a quote from TFA: | | > The third judge, Lord Justice Birss, took a different view. | While he agreed that "machines are not persons" ... | dang wrote: | Loosely related past threads: | | _Only Humans, Not AI Machines, Can Get a U.S. Patent, Judge | Rules_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28405333 - Sept | 2021 (7 comments) | | _South Africa issues world's first patent listing AI as | inventor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27995313 - July | 2021 (75 comments) | | _EPO and UKIPO Refuse AI-Invented Patent Applications_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21990346 - Jan 2020 (39 | comments) | zw123456 wrote: | I am a research fellow at a large tech company and part of my job | is to produce a certain number of patents per year. I have used | AI as an "aid" to developing a patent several times but never | thought for one minute it would make sense to list AI as the | inventor. That is ridiculous. I have used Excel, R, Google | Search, Mathematica, Python and several other modeling tools etc. | to develop new IPR, obviously no one would list any of those. It | was me doing the inventing, I am just using tool like any other. | km3r wrote: | It's draws an interesting question though, at what point, if | ever, does an AI system move beyond the scope of a tool and | into the scope of an assistant? I don't think we are anywhere | near that yet, but it's conceivable that we reach a point where | that question needs to be answered. | [deleted] | advael wrote: | This seems like the antebellum for an IP reckoning similar to | what resulted in the DMCA in the United States in the late 90s. | The technology is getting to the point where it makes the law as | it stands pretty nonsensical in the face of what can be done | | The scope of patents in software and technology is already | absurd, both because 12 years is an eternity for how quickly that | industry moves, and because increasingly trivial "inventions" | have been let through as the ability for patent officials to | interpret complicated digital innovations according to patent law | and policy has increasingly fallen behind the field. This is | already a serious problem, but currently still takes expensive | lawyers to take advantage of. Even if we make legal precedent | that says that AI can't own patents, the advent of better | purpose-specific text generation will quickly put patent trolling | in the hands of laypeople | | Personally, I think the DMCA was a horrible mistake. The | provisions it added to copyright created a ton of horrible | precedent that led to the draconian control private companies | exert over the lives of billions of people worldwide, justified | in law by their intellectual property concerns. I believe that if | Intellectual Property ever served a legitimate purpose, it has | now run its course and needs to be dismantled. I hope that this | new challenge moves us more in this direction, rather than some | new awful legislative band-aid that attempts to preserve the | status quo by destroying more of our rights | TehCorwiz wrote: | I can understand why this is an unpopular take with this | community regarding IP rights. Despite this being a valid | opinion I'm noticing a lot of people complaining with their | downvote button instead of an argument. | advael wrote: | I agree, and my strong stance against IP as a legal principle | in general is extremely unpopular in just about any circle I | talk to. I nonetheless think it's both correct and important. | I think people have bought pretty heavily into the rhetoric | surrounding the value of IP: That it exists to protect the | rights of creators. As far as I can tell, there are three | major problems with this | | 1. IP assignment is overwhelmingly not retained by the | creator of any work covered by IP. The vast overwhelming | majority of engineers, for example, have in their contract of | employment assigned all rights to any IP they generate in | their work to the company they work for. The same is true of | artists who contract with distributors | | 2. Independent creators often have no ability to successfully | defend their IP claims, because said claims require expensive | litigation, the cases are never straightforward enough for a | summary judgement, and the individual nature of the claims | mean that a class action lawsuit is nearly always infeasible | | 3. The way that IP law has been interpreted, especially under | the DMCA, is incredibly abusable. The early history of the | DMCA saw massive lawsuits filed by corporations against | individuals based on obviously ridiculous numbers calculated | as "potential lost sales" using flimsy evidence. A whole new | business model of tech patent trolling has created a cottage | industry that makes as many spurious claims as it can in | order to leech money from businesses without producing | anything of value. The current reading of the DMCA stymies | users' attempts to repair their devices or even protect their | privacy, because they can be criminally liable for attempts | to modify devices that can be argued to be partially acting | as DRM mechanisms, sometimes on the code running on the | device itself. | | When we talk about the value of a law or policy, the _intent_ | of the law is at best a diagnostic tool for an untested new | kind of attempt at something. At the end of the day, it doesn | 't matter what a policy or law intends, it matters what the | effects of the law are when interpreted and enforced. | Intellectual Property as a legal paradigm generally is | malfunctioning in a lot of places that harm people, harm | society, and fail to uphold its promise. I think that the | concept of ownership over ideas as a whole is at this phase | in humman history doing much, much more harm than good, and | needs to be eroded and eventually abolished from law | | As for how creative people can make money off of their work | in an environment without IP, there's actually a pretty clear | answer for this that is not even my observation. Most | creative work right now is paid for at production, not based | on IP rights. The engineers working at a company are paid for | their time and labor, and sign over the IP they produce. | Independent artists work on commissions, and at a larger | scale, crowdfund their projects. It is only the occasionally | very established and wealthy artist or inventor that can | really take advantage of IP laws, and their beneficiaries are | as it stands mostly large corporations, treating IP as | effectively a dragon hoard. | brian_herman wrote: | Why not setup a corporation for the AI to file the patents. This | would have corporate personhood and represent the AI. | Vespasian wrote: | As others have said, he is specifically trying to get an AI | recognized as an Inventor instead of a human (where that is | required). The invention does not seem to be important to him | at all. | | He is filling similar cases all around the the globe and is | (mostly) loosing. | | It remains unclear whether his motivation is financial or | ideological or something different all together. | bdowling wrote: | In the U.S., the inventor must be a natural person. The owner, | however, is often a corporation (e.g., when an employee invents | something in the scope of employment). In that case the owner | corporation applies for the patent in the inventor's name, but | it will own all the rights in the patent. The inventor usually | signs an inventor declaration. | | In other countries the inventor can be a corporation. There are | some cases where this matters (e.g., disputes over inventorship | or ownership of the invention of an employee), but in most | cases it probably doesn't matter. | awinter-py wrote: | > The third judge, Lord Justice Birss ... also signalled that the | patent case could have been made simpler if only Mr Thaler "was | not such an obsessive". | driverdan wrote: | By AI he means mathematical equation. When you reword this to | "Mathematical equation cannot be the inventor of a patent" it | sounds obvious and stupid. And that's because it is. Of course an | equation can't patent something. | edouard-harris wrote: | Given that all human behavior can (very likely) be reduced to | mathematical equations too, I'm not sure this is a convincing | reductio. It certainly doesn't seem obvious that a rule like | this could be consistently applied if, for example, AIs became | as capable as humans -- or far more so. | tired_and_awake wrote: | > human behavior can ultimately be reduced to mathematical | equations | | Wait what? Source? | mrbungie wrote: | I think a lot of people would expect some evidence for your | first phrase. | edouard-harris wrote: | You're right. I'll edit the parent to soften the assertion, | though I do consider it to be virtually certain. | | In terms of evidence: the simplest argument is probably | that humans appear to consistently obey the laws of | physics, and the laws of physics appear to be mathematical. | canjobear wrote: | Given sufficiently powerful computers, human behavior could | be simulated. The action of the computer would be | describable as a (possibly enormously long and complicated) | equation. I don't see how you can disagree with this unless | you think there is something metaphysically inexplicable | about human behavior. | reverend_gonzo wrote: | Sure, and those sufficiently powerful computers don't | exist yet. | 2muchcoffeeman wrote: | Basically this line of argument boils down to assuming | something about something we don't and may never have. | | Until we have this technology should we adjust laws for | hypotheticals? No. | canjobear wrote: | Put another way: the claim that humans cannot be modeled | as equations equates to the claim that humans cannot be | modeled using physics. Do you want to defend that? | lordlic wrote: | See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computationalism | | It's a very common worldview among the tech set. | wil421 wrote: | AI doesn't exist. In the past 5-10 years AI has been rewritten to | AGI. AI now means math models. Just look at the movie AI and | others like it. I guess when you become a buzzword it's time to | change the meaning. Thankfully the UK and US court system are | sane. | | When "AI" says no I don't want to invent a patent I want to play | music (or whatever else it may desire) I'll believe it exists. | | Machine learning, deep learning and gradient decent are better | terms. | beervirus wrote: | The UK court of appeal. | latortuga wrote: | I wonder how this will dovetail with something like GitHub | copilot. Obviously there will have to be a line somewhere. AI | wrote 10% of the code in this system => patent allowed. AI wrote | 90% => no patent. But where is the line? | marcodiego wrote: | What if my AI invents something and then someone else patents it? | Can I use the invention from my AI as prior art? | tyre wrote: | Remove "AI" and it makes sense. | | If you invent something and someone else patents it, you show | prior art to invalidate the patent. | | Whether you used software or a lathe or a lawnmower or excel to | make the thing doesn't matter. | superjan wrote: | It is only prior art if it is made public. If you invent | something and keep it secret someone else can still patent | it. | mmmBacon wrote: | In US we've moved from first to invent to first to file. This | makes prior art a lot less relevant. | jefftk wrote: | First to file means that, as someone who invented earlier | but did not file, you aren't going to be able to get that | the patent reassigned to you. But you can still use your | prior art to get the patent invalidated. | | (Not a lawyer) | bdowling wrote: | > ...as someone who invented earlier but did not file, | you aren't going to be able to get that the patent | reassigned to you. | | There's an exception: When a second applicant disclosed | the invention publicly both prior to the first | application and less than one year prior to the second | application. | | Another note: Prior art needs to be publicly available. | So, a first inventor's private notes can't invalidate a | second inventor's patent. In the old first-to-invent | system, however, the private notes of a first inventor | could allow the first inventor to get the patent ahead of | a second inventor who filed first. | ghaff wrote: | IANAL but presumably any prior art involving a computer or | other type of machinery you created is effectively your prior | art. The fact there were tools evolved wouldn't generally | matter. | Ekaros wrote: | Depends, AI you are running or AI you are selling? I don't see | how AI would make much difference compared to let's say | simulation software for some chemical process or anything at | all. | | If you were running it and someone stole the results prior art | would likely be yours. If you allowed someone to run it with | their own inputs it would likely be theirs. | bdowling wrote: | The applicant recorded his AI as the inventor for some reason | (*). Had the applicant recorded himself as the inventor having | used the AI as a tool to invent, then the application probably | would have been allowed. | | Using a mechanical process to search a large possibility space to | find a patentable subspace is not new. For example, testing | chemical compounds to find a mixture with optimal properties or | testing drug dosages to find the most effective treatment is | common. The resulting narrow range of mixtures or dosages is | patentable so long as it is new (not done before), non-obvious | (inventive), useful, etc. Also, if I hire other people to do the | lab work at my direction, then I am still the inventor, not the | lab technicians. Similarly, AI is just another tool. | | Edit: (*) After looking into this more, the applicant here is on | a crusade to have an AI recognized as an inventor. | https://artificialinventor.com/patent-applications/. That web | site contains nonsense like the following: | | > _Arguably, DABUS may be considered "sentient" in that any | chain-based concept launches a series of memories (i.e., affect | chains) that sometimes terminate in critical recollections, | thereby launching a tide of artificial molecules. It is these | associated memory sequences, and the accompanying simulated | neurotransmitter rush, that are considered equivalent to | subjective feelings in humans (i.e., sentience). In this way, | DABUS has an emotional appreciation for what it conceives._ | Andrex wrote: | I see where this is going. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv_Y-norYPU | AussieWog93 wrote: | I had the same initial reaction, but it makes sense for the | laws to be written based on current reality and not some | hypothetical future. | | AIs are not conscious (now), nor do they elicit anything | resembling consciousness. | | If that changes, the law can (should) change with it. | Ekaros wrote: | I would even extend this to other animals. If we reach a | point where they can communicate and work in legal system | like humans they should also gain authorship rights. | | Now what standards and how to apply them is complicated | question. Specially with software. Which can be written to | make complex actions. But still not have consciousness ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-25 23:00 UTC)