How Do We Afford Patent Protection When Novel Ideas Are Created By Artificial Intelligence?

UPDATE: Since publication of this article, a number of global patent offices including the UK, the European Patent Office and US have refused DABUS patent applications. The patent offices refused these applications because DABUS is not a “natural person” and thus cannot be an inventor. In the absence of successful appeals, it seems unlikely that patent offices will permit AI inventorship with ownership vesting in non-human inventors.

Researchers at the Artificial Inventor Project (a project group seeking intellectual property rights for the autonomous output of Artificial Intelligence (AI) filed patent applications listing an AI system as an inventor (as opposed to, or in addition to, a human inventor).