A U.S. computer scientist lost a bid to patent an invention created by his artificial intelligence system on Wednesday, in a landmark British case over whether artificial intelligence can be patented. Stephen Thaler wants to patent two inventions in the UK that he says were designed by his "creativity machine" called DABUS.
The UK Intellectual Property Office rejected his application for patent registration on the grounds that the inventor must be a human or company, not a machine.
Thaler appealed to the UK Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his appeal on Wednesday because under UK patent law, "the inventor must be a natural person".
"This appeal does not engage with the broader question of whether technological advances resulting from the autonomous action of machines driven by artificial intelligence should be patentable," Judge David Kitchin said in the court's written ruling. "Nor does it address whether the meaning of the term 'inventor' should be expanded... to include machines powered by artificial intelligence that produce new, non-obvious products and processes that may be considered to have advantages over known products and processes."
Thaler's lawyers said in a statement: "This judgment establishes that UK patent law is currently completely unsuitable to protect inventions produced autonomously by artificially intelligent machines."
Thaler lost a similar lawsuit in the United States earlier this year, with the Supreme Court refusing to hear a challenge to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's refusal to issue patents for inventions created by its artificial intelligence system.
Giles Parsons, a partner at law firm Browne Jacobson, who was not involved in the case, said the UK Supreme Court's ruling was not surprising.
"This ruling will not have a significant impact on the patent system at this time," he said. That's because, for now, AI is a tool, not an agent. I hope this will change in the medium term, but we can address issues as they arise. "