[HN Gopher] AI cannot be the inventor of a patent, appeals court...
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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
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