Two patent applications naming artificial intelligence
as the sole inventor were refused by the European Patent Office
following oral proceedings on the grounds that an inventor must be
a human being. Is a machine capable of truly inventive activity? If
so, what are the implications for the protection of the resulting
technology?
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be broadly defined as the
concept of a machine performing a task that is normally accepted as
requiring human intelligence. AI algorithms 'learn' from
data, information and even from their own decisions, and are
capable of extracting concepts and relationships at high speed. AI
is increasingly being incorporated into drug discovery
pipelines.
