AI cannot be named as patent 'inventor', UK supreme court rules

Artificial intelligence cannot be legally named as an inventor to secure patent rights, the UK supreme court has ruled. In a judgment on Wednesday, Britain's highest court concluded that "an inventor must be a person" in order to apply for patents under the current law. The ruling comes after the technologist Dr Stephen Thaler took his long-running dispute with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to the country's top court over its rejection of his attempt to list an AI he created as the inventor for two patents. The US-based developer claims the AI machine named DABUS autonomously created a food or drink container and a light beacon and that he is entitled to rights over its inventions. However, the IPO concluded in December 2019 that the expert was unable to officially register DABUS as the inventor in patent applications because it was not a person.