Can Artificial Intelligence Be Named as Inventors for Patents?

By: Elissa Tenenbaum

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is complex software that makes decisions with the help of some human input; its three main qualities are intentionality, intelligence, and adaptability. [1] AI is a quickly growing industry; the global AI market size is expected to reach 390.9 billion USD by 2025. [2] Undoubtedly, AI is and will continue to be a key driver of new technology. [3] AI encompasses a high level of precision and accuracy and is advantageous in numerous fields, such as banking, manufacturing, weather forecasting, and predicting natural disasters. [4]

 

Currently, the USPTO is requesting comments from the public on patent-related AI issues. [5] As AI is used more to create inventions, AI inventorship becomes an increasingly pressing issue that should either be addressed by the courts, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and/or Congress.

 

Who should be named as an inventor for an AI-created invention? Can AI be named as inventor? Can the creators of an AI robot be named as the inventors? Can AI-created inventions be patented at all?

 

Progress Clause of the Constitution

The Progress Clause of the Constitution states that Congress has the power “[t]o Promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” [6] Allowing AI-created inventions to be patented would promote the progress of science.

 

The Statutory Text Regarding AI

Congress has not directly addressed AI inventorship. The Patent Act defines an “inventor” as “the individual . . . who invented or discovered the subject matter of the invention.” [7] This definition does not explicitly prohibit AI from being named as inventors. However, there are other sections in the Patent Act where “person” is used. [8] One may argue that since Congress used “person” throughout the Patent Act, they intended for the statute to include only include humans, specifically regarding inventorship. On the other hand, the lack of “person” in the inventorship definition may suggest that Congress intended to leave it broad and more inclusive. [9]

 

The Courts’ Interpretation of the Patent Act

U.S. courts have also not directly addressed AI inventorship. To determine inventorship is fact specific, and there is no bright-line standard for every case. [10] However, the Federal Circuit provided guidelines for what constitutes inventorship: “‘Conception is the touchstone of inventorship.’” [11] In addition, conception requires “that the inventor appreciate that which he has invented.” [12] An inventor must “make a contribution to the conception of the subject matter of a claim.” [13] However, a company cannot be named as an inventor. [14] The Federal Circuit further defined an inventor as “a competent witness to explain the invention and what was intended to be conveyed by the specification and covered by the claims.” [15]

 

Is AI capable of conceiving an invention? Do the creators of the AI satisfy the conception requirement for an AI-created invention?

 

AI is self-learning and intelligent; it can create an invention. [16] AI likely fulfills the conception requirement for inventorship. Humans may be too far removed from the inventorship process of an AI-created invention. They may not have created the subject matter covered by the patent or may not even know how the invention works. At the moment, humans have to at least provide AI basic mathematical parameters. Yet, AI is closer than a human to conceiving the subject matter of an AI-created invention. If the courts were to determine that AI can be named an inventor, joint-inventorship is also an option.

 

Rights in Other Areas of Intellectual Property Law

In Naruto v. Slater, a monkey took pictures of itself by simply pressing a camera button, and the court held that animals do not have standing to sue because the Copyright Act did not explicitly extend the concept of authorship or statutory standing to animals. [17] However, AI is far more intelligent and capable of performing complex tasks than animals.

 

In addition, the Copyright Act specifically mentions the word “humans.” [18] However, the Patent Act does not specifically mention “humans.” [19] This also suggests that Congress intended to keep the patent inventorship definition broad, and AI can be included in that definition.

 

Other Countries’ Decisions

The European Patent Office (EPO) recently decided that AI cannot be an inventor for a European patent application. [20] An inventor must be a “natural person.” [21] The EPO indicated that their decision is consistent with the European national and the international consensus, including the US, that inventors are human beings. [22] If the US were to look to the EPO for guidance, AI cannot be named as an inventor for US patents.

 

Patent Ownership

If AI was able to be named an inventor, their employer would still be able to own the acquired patent because they could be named the Assignee [23] Since a business could own an invention created by AI, allowing AI inventorship would not be detrimental to one’s business, and companies will continue to invest in AI. This would be consistent with one of patent law’s main goal, incentivizing innovation.

 

On the other hand, if the human behind AI named the inventor, this would also promote incentivizing innovation. However, an issue of fairness may arise because as AI advances, it will likely be more able than humans to create inventions. Would it be fair to allow an inventor who coded an AI robot to take credit and profit from all of the AI robot’s inventions? This is an issue that either the courts, the USPTO, or Congress must consider.

 

Conclusion

An individual must be able to be named as an inventor for AI-created inventions because otherwise, these inventions cannot be patented. This would prohibit innovation and disincentivize companies to use AI. The current most practical solution is to allow the humans behind AI to be named the inventors. This would not conflict with the current statutes, including the Patent Act, and court decisions that use the word “person” and “human.”

[1]See Darrell M. West, What is artificial intelligence? , Brookings, (Oct. 4, 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-is-artificial-intelligence/.

[2]Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis 2018-2025, GlobeNewswire, (Feb. 10, 2020), https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/02/10/1982156/0/en/Global-Artificial-Intelligence-AI-Market-Size-Share-Trends-Analysis-2018-2025.html.

[3]See Kashyap Vyas, 7 Ways AI Will Help Humanity, Not Harm It, Interesting Engineering, (Dec. 3, 2018), https:// interestingengineering.com/7-ways-ai-will-help-humanity-not-harm-it.

[4]Id.

[5]USPTO, Request for Comments on Patenting Artificial Intelligence Inventions, Federal Register (Aug. 27, 2019), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/08/27/2019-18443/request-for-comments-on-patenting-artificial-intelligence-inventions.

[6]U.S. Const. art. I, §8, cl. 8.

[7]35 U.S.C. § 100(f).

[8]See 35 U.S.C. § 102(a) (“A person shall be entitled to a patent . . .”) (emphasis added); see also 35 U.S.C. § 116(a) (“When an invention is made by two or more persons jointly. . .”) (emphasis added).

[9]See Tina G. Yin Sowatzke, Meet DABUS: An Artificial Intelligence Machine Hoping to Maintain Two Patent Applications in its own Name, Lexology (Aug. 22, 2019), https://www.lexology.com/library/ (“AI has the functionality to fulfill the act of conception, supporting inventorship, and denying such rights to AI could deter AI developers and hinder innovation”).

[10]CODA Dev. S.R.O. v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 916 F.3d 1350, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2019).

[11]CODA Dev. Supra note 6, at 1358–59 (citation omitted).

[12]Invitrogen Corp. v. Clontech Laboratories, Inc., 429 F.3d 1052, 1063 (Fed. Cir. 2005).

[13]Eli Lilly and Co., 376 F.3d at 1362.

[14]New Idea Farm Equipment Corp. v. Sperry Corp., 916 F.2d 1561, 1566 n.4 (Fed. Cir. 1990) (agreeing with the district court’s recognition that only “people conceive, not companies” and finding that the company’s engineer, not the company, was the inventor).

[15]Voice Techs. Group v. VMC Sys., Inc., 164 F.3d 605, 615 (Fed. Cir. 1999) (“Patents are written . . . for and by persons experienced in the field of the invention”).

[16]Hugh Howey, How to Build a Self-Conscious Machine, Wired, (Oct. 4, 2017), https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-build-a-self-conscious-ai-machine/.

[17]Naruto v. Slater, 2016 WL 362231, at *1, *3 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 28, 2016), aff’d, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018).

[18]Id. at *3.

[19]See, e.g., Invitrogen Corp., 429 F.3d at 1063 (“[C]onception requires that the inventor appreciate that which he has invented”); Ethicon, 135 F.3d at 1460 (“Conception is the formation in the mind of the inventor”) (internal quotations omitted).

[20]FRKelly, Can computers invent? EPO says no to AI inventors, Lexology, (Feb. 13, 2020), https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=59cea15e-d89a-4c89-9029-3b2619a952c4.

[21]Id.

[22]Id.

[23]See Pamela Samuelson, Allocating Ownership Rights in Computer-Generated Works, 47 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1185 (1985) (“allocating rights in computer-generated output to the user of the generator program is the soundest solution”).