Only a natural person can be an inventor after all. Australia’s world first flirtation with artificial intelligence as inventor has been reversed.
In an appeal from last year’s decision that “An artificial intelligence system can be an inventor for the purposes of the [Patents] Act”, the Full Federal Court on Wednesday ruled otherwise, essentially saying that doing so fails to give the relevant provision of the Patents Act a natural meaning.
The Court then made the observation that the questions arising if policy is to be that “inventor” includes artificial intelligence “should be attended to with some urgency”, given the facts of this case. These include who should own AI inventions, and whether the standard of inventive step needs to be re-assessed. Over to you policy makers.
Commissioner of Patents v Thaler [2022] FCAFC 62 (13 April 2022)
