In today’s age, artificial intelligence shows a serious development and now these systems have reached the capacity to produce unique works. However, there are legal barriers to patenting works created by artificial intelligence.
Computer scientist Stephen Thaler applied to the US Copyright office in 2019 for his work A Recent Entrance to Paradise, produced by the artificial intelligence called Creativity Machine. However, the office refused to grant copyright, citing that the work had to be created by a “natural person”.
Law does not accept artificial intelligence works
Now, the US federal court has announced its final decision on this issue. According to the court decision, it was stated that it is not possible to patent a work or invention created by artificial intelligence. Because, according to the patent law, it is stated that only people can own a patent.
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The word “individual” in patent law is used directly to mean “a person, being human”. Therefore, it seems unlikely that artificial intelligence works will be patented in a legal sense. When we think that today’s artificial intelligence is software created by humans, we see that the decision is correct. However, a court in Australia had determined that artificial intelligence systems could be recognized under patent law. It seems that in the future, we will witness more discussions on the ground of artificial intelligence and law.