Japan Court Rules Against Patent for AI-Invented Equipment

TapTechNews May 19th, according to NHK, on Friday local time, the Tokyo District Court of Japan made a ruling on whether the equipment invented by AI can obtain a patent - ruling that no patent would be granted on the grounds that the inventor must be a human.

It is reported that the plaintiff living in the US applied for a patent for the equipment independently invented by an artificial intelligence, and the name of the inventor was the artificial intelligence DABUS that independently invented this product. As early as three years ago, the patent office had already rejected this application, and it had clearly stated at that time that the inventor must be a human. The plaintiff refused to accept and filed a lawsuit, demanding the revocation of this decision.

The presiding judge of the Tokyo District Court, Nakajima Motoyuki, pointed out in the recent judgment that the definition of an invention in the Basic Law on Intellectual Property Rights is a product created by human activities. Even looking globally, there are many countries and regions that are cautious about the legal interpretation of listing AI as the inventor.

The presiding judge also said that the current local laws regarding patents have not taken into account AI inventions. AI will cause changes in the social and economic structure. According to the current legal interpretation, many problems will arise. First of all, legislation should be discussed and it is expected to reach a conclusion as quickly as possible, he urged the Diet to start discussions on this.

Before this, the UK Supreme Court had also made almost the same ruling on a similar case. According to TapTechNews' previous report, in December last year, an American computer scientist lost the lawsuit when applying for a patent for the invention created by his artificial intelligence system. The UK Supreme Court rejected his request because according to the UK Patent Law, the inventor of the patent must be a natural person. The scientist's lawyer said in a statement that this ruling determined that the current UK Patent Law is currently completely not suitable for protecting AI's independently generated inventions, and therefore completely insufficient to support any industry that relies on AI to develop new technologies.