Artificial Intelligence: UK's Supreme Court to rule on letting robots patent inventions

The UK's highest court is set to decide whether artificial intelligence (AI) robots should be allowed to patent their own inventions. Britain's Supreme Court has agreed to hear a computer scientist's bid to list his AI machine as the sole inventor of two separate products, in an application to the UK's patent office. The Supreme Court will hear Dr Stephen Thaler's bid to overturn an earlier ruling from a lower court, banning him from filing a patent application on behalf of his DABUS robot. The case comes after the UK's intellectual property office refused two patent applications, filed by Thaler on behalf of his DABUS system, over his failure to identify a "person" as the inventor of the products. Thaler had sought to file one patent for a "Food Container" and another for a flashing light, under the title "Devices and Methods for Attracting Enhanced Attention," in 2018.