It was recently reported that US law will not be granting patents to AI systems or recognizing them as inventors.

Indeed, this was ruled by a federal judge after the founder of a company in Missouri, Stephen Thaler, applied for two US patents in 2019 describing a food container based on fractal geometry and an emergency light beacon but gave credit to DABUS, a neural network he built. This was however rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office on the basis that only ‘natural persons’ were allowed to be named as inventors.

Thaler argued that there is no statute or case that has found an AI-generated invention cannot be patented, or that holds an AI cannot be listed as an inventor. Thaler is still determined to keep on fighting for the inventor rights of his machines in order to prevent humans from stealing ideas generated by computers and taking all the credit.

However, the Patent Office declared that the law states individuals – and not computer software – must take an oath to swear they are the inventor on a patent application.