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- LONDON, Dec 20 (Reuters) – An American computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions made by his artificial intelligence system, in a landmark case in Britain about whether AI can own patent rights.
- Stephen Thaler wanted to be given two patents in the UK over inventions he says were devised by his “creativity machine” called DABUS.
- His attempt to register the patents was rejected by Britain’s Intellectual Property Office on the grounds that the inventor must be a human or a company, rather than a machine.
- Thaler appealed to the UK’s Supreme Court, which on Wednesday unanimously rejected his case.
- Judge David Kitchin, announcing the court’s decision, said that under UK patent law “an inventor must be a natural person”.
- Thaler earlier this year lost a similar bid in the United States, when the Supreme Court there refused to hear a challenge to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s refusal to issue patents for inventions created by his AI system.
- Reporting by Sam Tobin, Editing by Kylie MacLellan
