Patents For AI-Generated Innovations Are Allowed By A German Court

(PatriotWise.com) — The German Federal Court last month put an end to an ongoing battle to reform patent law to allow artificial intelligence systems to patent inventions, ruling that while AI-generated inventions could register patents, the AI system itself could not be named as the inventor.

Several years ago, the Artificial Inventor Project sought to reform patent law using the case of the AI system DABUS, which invented a food container and a flashlight. To protect the inventions, the group sought to apply for patents in multiple jurisdictions, naming DABUS as the inventor.

The move triggered debate over whether artificial intelligence could be considered an inventor or if an inventor had to be a human being for the purposes of patent law.

According to the German high court, a patent application that only lists the AI system as the inventor would be inadmissible, regardless of whether the system, in this case DABUS, created the invention or was simply used as a tool to come up with the design. The court said Germany’s Patent Act requires that the inventor named be a living human being.

The court also noted that those applying for a patent must include consistent statements on the designated inventor in both the application form and the inventor description.

The court noted that in the application for the food container, the applicant identified himself as the inventor. However, he later applied for changes, listing the AI system DABUS as the inventor. This rendered the designation invalid, the court said.

In addressing the question of whether it would be possible to include an AI system in the inventor designation, the court said the scientist who designed DABUS could indicate in the application that the AI system was a tool used in creating the invention.

The German Federal Court’s ruling mirrors previous decisions in other jurisdictions that decided that a living human being must be named as the inventor to patent an invention, even if it is developed or created by artificial intelligence.

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