The U.S. District Court has upheld that artificial intelligence systems cannot patent inventions because they are not human. The Verge writes about it.

According to Judge Leonard P. Stark, the Patent Law makes it clear that only one person can be the author of an invention. According to the decision of the US Supreme Court, the term “usually a person, a person”.

“This is the case where the question of the interpretation of the law begins and ends in the simple sense of the text. […]. There is no ambiguity about this: The Patent Law requires inventors to be natural persons, that is, humans,” Stark concluded.

The decision is the latest in a series of legal battles between scientist Stephen Thaler and the US Patent Office. Since 2019, the engineer has been trying to copyright the “Last Entry to Heaven” image in the name of an algorithm called the Creativity Machine. Subsequently, the United States Copyright Office (USPTO) denied Thaler registration.

The “Recent Entry to Heaven” chart created by the Creativity Machine algorithm. Data: Limit.

In 2021, the court upheld the USPTO decision. Now the federal district court has once again upheld the decision.

Thaler and his lawyer, Ryan Abbott, plan to appeal the decision, criticizing the court’s “narrow and textual approach” to the Patent Law.

“It ignores the purpose of Patent Law and the fact that AI-powered inventions can no longer be patented in the United States. It’s an outcome that has real negative social consequences,” said Abbott.

Recall that in February the USPTO rejected an application to register the intellectual property of an art object created by a machine learning algorithm.

In June, the inventor requested the court to patent the painting created by the AI ​​model.

In August, business and intellectual property representatives in the US called for a rewrite of patent laws for artificial intelligence.