Rights for Robots: As of now, AIs can’t hold patents

And that's OK with me. But it is going to become an issue one of these days.

Angeline Premraj, Elizabeth Ferrill and Frank A. Decosta III, “AI can't hold patents to U.S. inventions (for now),” Reuters, 10.20.2022:

October 20, 2022 - Three years ago, Stephen Thaler filed two patent applications naming a single inventor, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), following Director review, found the applications to be incomplete for lacking a valid inventor on the ground that a machine cannot be an inventor. Thaler appealed the USPTO's final decisions to the District Court, which similarly concluded that an "inventor" must be a natural person.

Thaler then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, with the sole issue being whether AI qualifies as an "inventor" under U.S. patent law. The answer (for now) is no. (Thaler v. Vidal, No. 21-2347, *2 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 5, 2022)).

There is more at the link.

H/t Tyler Cowen.