An Australian Court has decided that an artificial intelligence can be recognized as an inventor in a patent submission. The Register reports: In a case brought by Stephen Thaler, who has filed and lost similar cases in other jurisdictions, Australia’s Federal Court last month heard and decided that the nation’s Commissioner of Patents erred when deciding that an AI can’t be considered an inventor.
Justice Beach reached that conclusion because nothing in Australia law says the applicant for a patent must be human. As Beach’s judgement puts it: “… in my view an artificial intelligence system can be an inventor for the purposes of the Act. First, an inventor is an agent noun; an agent can be a person or thing that invents. Second, so to hold reflects the reality in terms of many otherwise patentable inventions where it cannot sensibly be said that a human is the inventor. Third, nothing in the Act dictates the contrary conclusion.”
The Justice also worried that the Commissioner of Patents’ logic in rejecting Thaler’s patent submissions was faulty. “On the Commissioner’s logic, if you had a patentable invention but no human inventor, you could not apply for a patent,” the judgement states. “Nothing in the Act justifies such a result.” Justice Beach therefore sent Thaler’s applications back to the Commissioner of Patents, with instructions to re-consider the reasons for their rejection. Thaler has filed patent applications around the world in the name of DABUS — a Device for the Autonomous Boot-strapping of Unified Sentience. Among the items DABUS has invented are a food container and a light-emitting beacon.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.