Stephen Thaler lost in the British Supreme Court the case for obtaining patents for inventions created by his artificial intelligence system. This is the first such case in the UK, which also sheds light on the issue of whether AI can have patent rights.
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The Supreme Court in the United Kingdom issued a ruling in which it stated that . The case has been ongoing since 2018 and
The case began back in 2018, when Stephen Thaler tried to register two patents for inventions that were created by his artificial intelligence system named DABUS. He argued that as the owner of the tool he should be recognized as the beneficiary of the patent. The UK Intellectual Property Office however rejected his application, arguing that the inventor must be a physical person or a company, not a machine. This decision was also supported by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, which unequivocally stated that AI cannot be recognized as an inventor.
This verdict is also part of a broader discussion about the rights of artificial intelligence and robots and it clearly shows that these tools cannot be treated as creators in patent applications or other documents related to new products or ideas. In practice, this means that only humans are considered capable of the act of invention, which is an expression of human consciousness.
Judge David Kitchin stated in the court's written ruling that the case "did not concern the broader issue of whether technical progress generated by autonomously operating and AI-powered machines should be patentable".
Simon Barker from the law firm Freeths noted that this verdict raises "interesting political questions" about how governments may seek to change regulations in the future, as artificial intelligence technology progresses.
Thaler's lawyers argue that "this verdict shows that UK patent law is currently completely inadequate for protecting inventions autonomously generated by AI machines".
This ruling suggests that artificial intelligence can be treated as an advanced tool, not an inventor. This changes the traditional concept of "inventor" in UK patent law, imposing a requirement on companies using artificial intelligence to develop products to prove that they or their employees are the actual creators, even if the people involved in the process have limited participation in the creation itself.
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