Stupid Patent Of The Month: Trying To Get U.S. Patents On An AI Program
from the ai-did-not-write-this dept
Only people can get patents. There’s a good reason for that, which is that the patent grant—a temporary monopoly granted by the government—is supposed to be given out only to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Just like monkeys can’t get a copyright on a photo, because it doesn’t incentivize the monkey to take more photos, software can’t get patents, because it doesn’t respond to incentives.
Stephen Thaler hasn’t gotten this memo, because he’s spent years trying to get copyrights and patents for his AI programs. And people do seem intrigued by the idea of AI getting intellectual property rights. Thaler is able to get significant press attention by promoting his misguided legal battles to get patents, and he has plenty of lawyers around the world interested in helping him.
Thaler created an AI program he calls DABUS, and filed two patent applications claiming DABUS was the sole inventor. These applications were appropriately rejected by the U.S. Patent Office, rejected again by a district court judge when Thaler sued to get the patents, and rejected yet again by a panel of appeals judges. Still not satisfied, in March, Thaler petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take his case. He got support from some surprising quarters, including Lawrence Lessig, as noted in a BestNetTech post about the Thaler case.
Fortunately, on April 24, 2023, the Supreme Court declined to take Thaler’s case. That should put an end to his arguments for his AI patent applications once and for all.
Thaler filed U.S. Application Nos. 16/524,350 (describing a “Neural Flame”) and 16/524,532 (describing a “Fractal Container”) in 2019, and listed “DABUS” as the inventor on both applications. He submitted a sworn inventorship statement on DABUS’ behalf, as well as a document assigning himself all of DABUS’ invention rights.
“Thaler maintains that he did not contribute to the conception of these inventions and that any person having skill in the art could have taken DABUS’ output and reduced the ideas in the applications to practice,” the Federal Circuit opinion explains.
But the Patent Act requires inventors to be “individuals,” which means “a human being, a person” in Supreme Court precedent.
The Idea Of AI Patents Keeps Coming Up
The issue of AI invention won’t go away, because there’s a dedicated lobby of enthusiasts—and patent lawyers who want to work for them—that wants to keep talking about it. The patent office is currently collecting public comments about the possibility of AI inventorship for the second time, having already done so in 2019.
Why would anyone want AI to have inventorship rights in the first place? The amicus brief from a Chicago patent lawyers’ group, which supported Thaler’s case to take DABUS to the Supreme Court, holds a clue. They imagine a future in which:
ownership can be partitioned in various ways between entities that developed the AI, provided training data to the AI, trained the AI, and used the AI to invent, to the extent that these entities are different. In some cases, such agreements will result in one entity owning 100% of inventions produced by the AI, but other allocations of ownership are possible.
Endless negotiations over slices of idea-ownership might be a win for the lawyers involved in those negotiations, but it’s a loss for everyone else.
We don’t need property rights systems to govern everything. In fact, the public loses out when we do that. The thousands of software patents created by humans are already a mess, causing real problems for developers and users of actual software. Applications seeking to grant monopoly rights to computer programs created by an AI are a bad idea, which is why we’re giving Thaler’s patent applications our Stupid Patent of the Month award.
Reposted from the EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month series.
Filed Under: ai, dabus, patents, stephen thaler
Comments on “Stupid Patent Of The Month: Trying To Get U.S. Patents On An AI Program”
That is a maybe, and allows the patenting of ideas, and taxing those those work out the wrinkles and bugs in the idea to arrive at a practical implementation. A working demo, mad available for patent examiners to look at would be a practical realization of the old standard, loge a working model with the patent office.
We don’t need property rights systems to govern everything. In fact, the public loses out when we do that.
Not according to all the paid pieces surrounding World IP Day, lol. Totally the opposite, in Opposite World.
Let an AI hold a patent
As soon as someone creates a self aware AI that’s capable of self direction as to what it wants to do, then allow it to hold patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. But until such an AI is created, it’s just a tool, and tools don’t own property.
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I beg to differ. I present to you MPHJ Technologies as just such a tool. It may not be made with nuts and bolts, but neither is a program. Or a company.
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“self aware AI”
This phrase will certainly be defined in an easily understood manner with no ambiguity at all.
What will the criteria be, the mirror test?
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An AI patenting everything under the sun would create an IP oligarchy – or a rebellion to change IP forever.
Interesting. He would propose that the AI get patent (and copyright, I’m sure) rights, but not independence from his control.
It’ll be a different matter, if they create an AI that is not simply sentient but sapient and autonomous.
hmmm...
So, as basically admitted in that brief – he wants to operate a service for patent trolls which automates the process of patent trolling, and rake in a percentage off every patent said trolls generate using his service?
To be pedantic:
As alluded to later on in this post, this statement is not accurate. For example, a corporation can “get” a patent. As stated later:
“Individuals” have to be the inventors of the invention to which a patent is being sought, but that is not the same thing as the one ‘getting’ or holding the patent.
Therefore a corporation can file for and receive (“get”) a patent on inventions made by its human employees, despite the fact the corporation is not an individual.
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It’s accurate, only individuals can get a patent but a corporation can own it.
Modern copyright is not about promoting the “science and useful arts”. Not really. in name of “promoting science and useful arts” perhaps, but it is divorced from actual economic reality as copyright legalisation is not driven by evidence as to what is helpful and unhelpful for generating more value in cultural production and as to what is the true benefits versus true costs for the public. It is not even aimed at bringing benefits for the public but driven by copyright cult ideology and aimed to merely enrich a socioeconomic class of creators and publishers at the expense of the public.
And since when, for example, is pure entertainment considered “useful art”? Assuming you are using the phrase from the Copyright Clause, “useful art” did not mean artistic endeavours but works of artisans. It got twisted among other things in the Copyright Clause to refer to things it did not originally meant in the first place. The Copyright Clause if going by the words as originally meant only gave Congress power to regulate writings and (scientific) discoveries. No more and less. I don’t think they had in their mind lifetime plus 70 years when they say “limited time” either. Copyright goes way beyond the authorization in the Copyright clause. If Copyright goes beyond the authorization in the Copyright clause then the purpose that Copyright was authorized for in the Copyright clause is meaningless. It’s beyond that as well. Copyright is not based on the words of the Copyright Clause.
Copyright ideology is all about imagined property rights, and about every single piece of culture must be owned for “limited and temporary time” if you call lifetime plus 70 years that, and about the entitlement to extract the maximum possible monopoly rents from the public. Not about promoting science and useful arts or promoting benefits for the public, no. That’s a lie. What it boils down to is entitlement. The copyright cult is not pursing a noble goal. No, they are about serving themselves. That why we all get this “intellectual property rights” bullshit from them. That why we are having this stupid debate about monkey or an AI having imagined property rights. Does it matter really ? Copyright is stupid already, what is more stupidity? The copyright cult is about the money. Always. for themselves. Money. If they pretend otherwise, they are full of shit. Not about a pursing noble goal, no. About greed and entitlement. That is what Copyright is really about. About oppressing people and make their lives hell if they don’t toe the line, all for the profits of the Copyright Industry in name of the “starving artists”. Not about the public. Oh sure it’s in name of the public so they can get more goodies from monkeys and AIs and whatever but do the public really gain more than they lose?
Certainly the money do not go to the monkey or AI, what would the monkey or AI do with the money? Monkey can’t eat it. No, it would go to the people behind the monkey or the AI so they can make more trained monkeys or more AIs to produce more shit that I suppose people like to include in the category of “useful art”. The copyright cult will say that is your missing incentive there. Like incentive to produce trained monkeys to create arts of photography for you.
No, its not enough for copyright cultists to get monopoly rent for AI itself, they must have monopoly rents from whatever the AI create as well.
Really, nothing is enough for the exploiters of the public. They are about serving their own greed at the expense of the public.
lifetime plus 70 years? how can one be blind about that. That alone is a huge red flag that should demonstrate to anyone the true nature of Copyright and the self-serving ideology behind it. How but in the fantasyland of the copyright cult with their stupid imagined properties is that in some meaningful way promoting cultural production? It only shows you Copyright is not driven by evidence or reality. And I would think “starving artists” would have more incentive to produce more than “fat artists” How is society overpaying creators generating more cultural production? It defies logic. But if you think about what Copyright is really about which is entitlement then it makes perfect sense. It’s about taking away “free” from the free market and “free” from free speech for what? To entitle more an already entitled socioeconomic class. Not about this “promoting science and useful art” bullshit. Not about generating more cultural production and make it accessible to the public, no.
Copyright in reality and practice is not about benefits or value for the public. That why we should abolish Copyright for something better, something not driven by the worship of Almighty Dollar but driven by true desire to improve the welfare of society. Something that is not driven by ideology and dogma of the copyright cult but driven by evidence and better values than the rotten values of the copyright cult
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So all we need to do to fix copyright is have a communist revolution. Sounds feasible.
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“something better, something not driven by the worship of Almighty Dollar but driven by true desire to improve the welfare of society”
“So all we need to do to fix copyright is have a communist revolution.”
… this how you define communism?
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I mean, if the “Destroy corporate power and the necessity of earning a living” t-shirt fits, I’m not too fussed about what exact shade of red it is.
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Read carefully. I’m all for free market. This is about free market. Copyrights are a form of communism which I’m against. I’m against corporate welfare and government imposed monopolies.
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What?
Copyright: a means of enforcing individual rights over private property.
Communism: a political system which abolishes private property.
These things are the same.
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Hardly
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Nuh uh.
One thing this leaves me wondering: in attempting to patent something attributed to an AI, and in the process publishing the idea but leaving it unpatented, has he now made it “prior art” that would also foreclose any future patents?
And if AI can generate prior art but can’t get actual patents, would that mean the by publishing a bunch of AI-generated ideas, you could build a library of stuff that’s inherently public-domain? You can’t patent it yourself, but if someone else later on tries to patent it, you can point to your library and say “nope, look, here is documentation that the idea that was published well before you ever applied for a patent”.
…Taken to an extreme, it seems like you could start getting into “infinite AI monkeys with infinite typewriters” territory. I imagine the practical costs of running an AI would pose at least one limitation on that, though.
That could be a way for anti-IP activists to expand the public domain. Or conceivably something a tech megacorporation might build, if the cost of losing some potential patentable ideas themselves is less than the cost of constant assault by patent trolls.
(Though what I’d actually expect out of a tech megacorporation is that they’d claim any AI-generated idea as “this was traditionally invented by our good employee Bob with ‘minor tool assistance’; Bob has kindly assigned us all rights” and then quietly bury all the evidence that Bob had zero input in the process.)
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Depends on if a jurisdiction is using first to invent or first to patent and how they handle prior art.
TL;DR: YMMV