Source: Radio New Zealand
Stephen Thaler is seeking a patent for a new type of food container. RNZ
An American computer scientist wants New Zealand’s courts to decide whether AI can legally be an inventor in a global test case next week.
Stephen Thaler is seeking a patent for a new type of food container.
The sticking point is he named his artificial intelligence system, called DABUS, as the inventor.
The Patent Office turned his application down in 2022, and the High Court agreed, with both saying an “inventor” had to be human.
Thaler was set to challenge that in the Court of Appeal on February 24.
His lawyer Clive Elliott KC said when Thaler filled out his application for a patent, he was simply stating the truth.
“He didn’t actually invent this food container, it was his machine,” he said.
“He invented what he calls an autonomous invention machine, in other words, an AI system which is itself able to invent.”
But in its 2023 decision, the High Court said the law in New Zealand did not allow for DABUS to get the credit.
“If the legislators had intended to allow granting of patents in New Zealand for inventions devised solely by non-humans such as artificial intelligences, or life forms other than human beings they would have drafted the Act to accommodate these possibilities specifically and explicitly,” it said.
But Elliot said New Zealand’s Patents Act was only passed in 2013 so parliament knew about artificial intelligence when they created it – and did not exclude it.
Auckland University professor Alex Sims says NZ faces the risk of being left behind. Supplied
Auckland University law professor and intellectual property expert Alex Sims said beyond the technicalities of the case, there was a bigger picture about whether AI could truly be an inventor.
“What AI does is it’s hoovering up human creativity and then it’s using that to produce something. So some people would actually argue that it’s not being creative because it’s all premised on what has gone before,” she said.
Thaler was part of a group taking cases about AI and patents around the world to try to set a precedent.
Auckland University lecturer Joshua Yuvaraj followed his – unsuccessful – attempt in Australia.
People had been at the heart of intellectual property law as it developed over centuries, because there was no mechanism for creation other than the human mind, he said.
“That is why AI is challenging that notion because AI, it appears, can do a lot of what the human mind can do is the argument. That is the tension that IP law is facing.”
The food container US computer scientist Stephen Thaler says was invented by his AI and should be given a patent. Supplied
Patent were seen as important because they would determine whether someone’s designs could be protected if they were created by AI.
“Say you use an AI to make a new type of e-scooter or a new type of kettle or a new coffee machine, if you can’t register that patent then someone can take that idea and make money off your idea,” he said
Sims said many countries tended to be in lock step when it came to intellectual property law.
Most were grappling with the AI patent challenge.
An inquiry in the UK had considered the issue and those it talked to had mixed views, she said.
Some people worried by not allowing AI patents, it could stifle creativity and innovation because people would tend not to use AI.
Others worried letting AI be an inventor would push people out of the creative process, she said.
Thaler and his group were testing the law in several countries but had been unsuccessful everywhere but South Africa, which was considered to have a unique style of IP law.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
