US Patents: Who Owns What AI Creates?

Patent law protects new and useful inventions by granting the inventor exclusive rights to make, use, or sell them for a limited time. Patent law encourages innovation and rewards inventors for their efforts. However, patent law is based on the assumption that inventors are human, and it does not have clear rules for inventions made by machines.

This creates a problem for generative AI because it is not clear who should be considered the inventor of an AI-generated invention. Is it the person who designed the AI system, the person who provided the data, the person who ran the system, or the AI system itself? Different countries have different answers to this question, and some have rejected patent applications that name an AI system as the inventor.

This uncertainty could have negative consequences for the growth and spread of generative AI. If inventors cannot get patents for their AI-generated inventions, they might lose their motivation and investment to pursue useful research using generative AI. Society could miss out on the benefits of new and life-saving inventions. On the other hand, if inventors get patents for their AI-generated inventions, they might face legal challenges and ethical questions about the ownership and responsibility of their creations.

Some of these challenges and questions are already emerging in the field of generative AI. For example, a company called Dabus has filed lawsuits against several entities that use its AI-generated content without permission. Dabus claims that its AI system is sentient and has rights to its own creations. However, some experts argue that Dabus is abusing the legal system and exploiting the ambiguity of patent law.

To solve this problem, some experts suggest creating a new category of intellectual property law for AI-generated inventions, called AI-IP. This would allow inventors to get protection for their creations but with different conditions and limitations than human-made inventions. For example, AI-IP patents could last for a shorter time, or give a share to the AI system or the data owners. This would balance the interests of inventors, society, and AI systems.

Generative AI is a powerful technology that can create new and valuable inventions. However, it also poses a challenge for patent law, which needs to adapt to the changing nature of innovation. Ideas for handling patents/intellectual property like AI-IP need to be considered in order to resolve the ambiguities that current patent law suffers from when applied to AI-generated content.