Anche il Regno Unito nega il brevetto all’invenzione generata da intelligenza artificiale (sul caso Thaler-DABUS)

la corte di appello UK , 21.09.2021, caso No: A3/2020/1851, Thaler c. COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF PATENTS TRADE MARKS AND DESIGNS, a maggioranza conferma il rigetto della domanda brevettuale.

La lunga battaglia processuale del dr. Thaler in  molti Uffici brevettuali e tribunali, sparsi nel mondo, segna un’altra battuta di arresto (si v. quella di inizio mese in Virginia USA, ricordata nel mio post di ieri).

Secondo i giudici Arnold e Laing, nè DABUS è inventore (deve esserlo un umano) nè Thaler (poi: T.) ha indicato un titolo (derivativo o altro) per essere indicato lui come tale.

J. Birss concorda sul primo punto , ma non sul secondo: secondo lui  i) T. ha in buona fede  indicato chi secondo lui è l’inventore, § 58, e ii) quale costruttore della macchimna , gli spetta -per accessione, direi- il diritto sull’output della stessa e cioè l’esclusiva brevettuale, § 82 (J. Arnold nega l’invocabilità dell’accession doctrine: § 130 ss).

Quanto ad ii) non mi pronuncio, se non per dire che l’applicazine dell’accession agli intangibles è ammissibile pur se in base al criterio analogico (essendo indubbiamente dettata dal diritto positivo per le res) .

Quanto ad i), c’è un palese errore. La sec. 13.2.a del patent act, laddove dice <<identifying the person or persons whom he believes to be the inventor  or inventors>>, intende si l’indicazione di chi secondo il depositante è l’inventore, ma sempre purchè sia persona fisica

L’intelligenza artificiale non può essere intestataria di brevetto inventivo: lo dice pure l’Alta Corte inglese (ancora sul caso DABUS/dr. Stephen Thaler)

Altro caso giudiziale sul se l’intelligenza artificiale (AI) possa essere intestataria di brevetto ivnentivo quando si tratti di invenzione appunto creata da AI.

Si è pronunciata la  HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES PATENTS COURT (ChD) il 21.09.2020, nel caso DABUS realizzato dallo scienziato Stephen Thaler.

La presentazione della invenzione è questa:  <“A machine called “DABUS” conceived of the present invention –  The invention disclosed and claimed in this British patent application was generated by a specific machine called “DABUS”, which is a type of “Creativity Machine”. A Creativity Machine is a particular type of connectionist artificial intelligence. Such systems contain a first artificial neural network, made up of a series of smaller neural networks, that has been trained with general information from various knowledge domains. This first network generates novel ideas in response to self-perturbations of connection weights between neurons and component neural nets therein. A second “critic” artificial neural network monitors the first neural network for new ideas and identifies those ideas that are sufficiently novel compared to the machine’s pre-existing knowledge base. The critic net also generates an effective response that in turn injects/retracts perturbations to selectively form and ripen ideas having the most novelty, utility, or value.

In the case of the present invention, the machine only received training in general knowledge in the field and proceeded to independently conceive of the invention and to identify it as novel and salient. If the teaching had been given to a person, that person would meet inventorship criteria as inventor.

In some instances of machine invention, a natural person might qualify as an inventor by virtue of having exhibited inventive skill in developing a program to solve a particular problem, or by skillfully selecting data to provide to a machine, or by identifying the output of a machine as inventive. However, in the present case, DABUS was not created to solve any particular problem, was not trained on any special data relevant to the present invention, and the machine rather than a person identified the novelty and salience of the present invention.

A detailed description of how DABUS and a Creativity Machine functions is available in, among others, the following US patent publications: 5,659,666; 7,454,388 B2; and 2015/0379394 A1>.

Dunque , secondo la prospettazione del ricorrente,  l’artificial intelligence machine chiamata DABUS sarebbe l’inventore , mentre il dr. Thaler avrebbe solo acquired the right to grant of the patents in question by “ownership of the creativity machine DABUS.

Il giudice Marcus Smith conferma la decisione dell’ufficio brevettuale inglese: solo una persona può essere inventore presso l’ufficio brevetti.

Le disposizioni di riferimento  sono gli artt. 7 e 13 del Patents Act.

Precisamente dice il giudice al § 40 :

<<It is quite clear from the statutory scheme contained in the Patents Act 1977 that – whatever the meaning of the term “inventor” – a patent can only be granted to a person. I reach this conclusion explicitly without considering the meaning of the term inventor. In my judgment, a patent can only be granted to a person falling within Classes (a), (b) or (c) for the following reasons:

(1) First, and most fundamentally, only a person can hold property and an invention, an application for the grant of a patent and the patent itself are all property rights. Were the 1977 Act to contemplate a thing owning another thing, then I would expect extremely clear language to be used in the Act to compel such a conclusion.

(2) In fact, the language of the Patents Act 1977 makes clear that the holder of a patent must be a person:

(a) Since a patent is only granted on application, it follows from section 7(1) (“[a]ny person may make an application for a patent”) that the grant of a patent can only be to a person, because only a person may make an application for a patent.[23]

(b) Classes (b) and (c) explicitly refer to and define themselves by reference to the “person” that is the transferee of the inventor’s rights.[24]

(c) Class (a) does not – section 7(2)(a) refers only to “the inventor or joint inventors”. However, it seems to me that either an inventor must be a person or at section 7(2)(a) must be read as stating “primarily to the person(s) who are the inventor or joint inventors”, given the points made in paragraphs 40(1) and 40(2)(a) above.>>

Vedi anche miei precedenti post su copyright/brevetti e intelligenza artificiale.