In the law, sometimes there is a need to craft a somewhat fictional aspect for purposes of allowing the wheels of justice to spin freely and not get unduly gummed up. That's where legal fiction can handily come to play. Per the definition of the Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute (LII), a legal fiction is formally denoted as "an assumption and acceptance of something as fact by a court, although it might not be, so as to allow a rule to operate or be applied in a manner that differs from its original purpose while leaving the letter of the law unchanged." This is done ostensibly in the pursuit of justice, but for which can also be more modestly employed in the interests of convenience or for other jurisprudential benefits. I am reminding you about the nature of legal fiction to provide a bit of a potential surprise or some might say a mind-bending bombshell about a loosely proposed legal fiction regarding AI. Some experts suggest that we might need to concoct a legal fiction associated with ascribing a form of legal personhood to AI systems.

Prof. Ryan Abbott has gathered an amazing group of scholars for his new book on AI and IP that is forthcoming later this year. In general, the various chapters focus on various aspects of machine-based AI. My contribution takes a different tack and instead consider idea that modern corporations and other non-human entities are also a form of artificial intelligence. But, unlike their computer-bound AI cousins, corporations have already been granted the legal fiction of personhood status and many accompanying civil rights.[1] An item still lacking from the corporate arsenal is inventorship rights. Yes, a corporation may own or license an invention and its resulting patents.