A Study on AI Creations and Patent Law Protection

The process of conceiving an invention, how AI may contribute to the conception process, and how AI inventions should be protected by patent law are examined. In our approach and analysis, AI remains in the category of sophisticated tools used by natural persons to create inventions. The approach is assessed against a decision by the Australian Federal Court acknowledging that the AI machine DABUS can be held as an inventor. As a result of our study, however, we believe that it is at least questionable whether DABUS can be considered an autonomous inventor. Thus, in those cases where someone names an AI machine as the inventor, we propose setting a high standard of proof in requesting to produce as evidence the actual machine output claimed as the invention and to illustrate how the machine operates to arrive at such output.