Recent news of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms inventing on their own has prompted discourse about whether a machine can be named as an inventor on a patent. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently stated its position on that in a decision published on 27 April, 2020. The USPTO stated that an “inventor” under U.S. patent law can only be a “natural person”, echoing similar recent decisions by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). These decisions leave open a more important question: Should there be any circumstance in which a patent can be granted on subject matter “conceived” by a machine? We argue that there should be, and expect that marketplace pressures to innovate faster, along with future developments in AI technology, will soon bring greater importance to this question.

To read the full article published in the June 2020 issue of Intellectual Property Magazine, click here.