March 17 (Reuters) - A computer scientist who has waged a global campaign for patents covering inventions conceived by his artificial intelligence sys

U.S. Supreme Court asked to decide if AI can be a patent 'inventor'

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2023-03-18 02:00:05

March 17 (Reuters) - A computer scientist who has waged a global campaign for patents covering inventions conceived by his artificial intelligence system asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to hear his case.

Stephen Thaler petitioned the high court to review an appeals court's decision that patents can only be issued to human inventors and that his AI system cannot be the legal creator of inventions it generated.

Thaler said in his brief that AI is being used to innovate in fields ranging from medicine to energy, and that rejecting AI-generated patents "curtails our patent system's ability — and thwarts Congress's intent — to optimally stimulate innovation and technological progress."

Thaler has said that his DABUS system, short for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, generated unique prototypes for a beverage holder and light beacon on its own.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a Virginia federal court rejected patent applications for the inventions on the grounds that DABUS is not a person. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld those decisions last year and said U.S. patent law unambiguously requires inventors to be human beings.