Artificial Intelligence: All Our Patent Are Belong to You 3.0 Lexology

Three years after Elon Musk announced in his famous "All Our Patent Are Belong To You" blog post that Tesla would be opening all of its patents to the public, he tweeted a recommendation of Max Tegmark's recent book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence--which just happens to allude to a not-too-distant future world in which, based on current patent law, all inventions might be free and open to the public. In this story, superhuman general artificial intelligence is secretly created by humans, and its creation began the end of human invention. In Tegmark's world, the superhuman A.I. makes its first millions by targeting Amazon's Mechanical Turk (or MTurk) and developing category-specific A.I. modules that perform tasks requested in the MTurk marketplace. Quickly thereafter, the superhuman A.I. makes its first billions by creating sensationally successful animated movies and series without human guidance. Although the Federal Circuit recently concluded that "inventors must be natural persons and cannot be corporations or sovereigns," the court's conclusion appeared to be based on the premise that the "conception" element required under patent law is "a mental act" and that only natural persons can perform such an act.