Federal Court Rules that Only Humans Can Hold Patents – Not AI Systems

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Friday that inventors must be human in another blow to computer scientists who believe AI machines should be recognized as inventors on patents.

Bloomberg reports that computer scientist Stephen Thaler has faced another setback in his efforts to have artificial intelligence machines recognized as inventors on patents. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Friday that the term “individual” in the Patent Act refers only to humans which means that an AI doesn’t count as an inventor of a patentable invention.

The decision aligns with courts in the European Union, the UK, and Australia, which have also refused to accept Thaler’s argument. Only one court ruled in favor of Thaler’s argument, a South African court that said AI can be a patent inventor.

The Federal Circuit is generally seen as the final authority on U.S. patent matters unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in. Thaler plans to appeal to the high court according to his attorney Ryan Abbott of Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP.

Abbott stated that the Federal Circuit adopted a “narrow and textualist approach” to the Patent Act. “It ignores the purpose of the Patent Act and the outcome that AI-generated inventions are now unpatentable in the United States,” he said. “That is an outcome with real negative social consequences.”

Thaler is not the only computer scientist arguing for AI rights in recent years. Breitbart News recently reported that Google has fired Blake Lemoine, an engineer who went public last month with his theory that Google’s AI language system is sentient and has its own “wants” and should be respected as a person. Google and several AI experts have denied Lemoine’s claims and the company confirmed that Lemoine had been fired.

Lemoine told BBC News that he is currently getting legal advice and could not comment further. In a statement, Google said that Lemoine’s claims about The Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LAMDA) were “wholly unfounded” and that the company worked with Lemoine for “months” to clarify this.

The statement said: “So, it’s regrettable that despite lengthy engagement on this topic, Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information.”

Read more at Bloomberg here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan