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AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

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Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#141

Post by otterley »

post-it wrote: post #85
layer8 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Patents incentivize investment in R&D. There is an argument to be made that the scope of patentable inventions should be more limited, in particular preventing trivial patents that didn’t require substantial R&D, and maybe also that patents shouldn’t last as long. But doing away completely with patents would certainly stifle companies’ willingness to invest in R&D. They’d rather wait for someone else to inven…

> Patents incentivize investment in R&D. In theory or in real life?

In real life.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#142

Post by paulryanrogers »

svara wrote: post #127
Buttons840 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You spend billions The you being taxpayers, right?

No, only a small part of this is publicly funded.

Which part is small? Productizing? R&D? Marketing?

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#143

Post by otterley »

grim_io wrote: post #8
cmiles8 wrote: post #5

This is consistent with rulings in other courts globally around IP rights. IP protects content created by humans. Your AI slop is effectively public domain.

That's not how I understand it. AI is a tool, like your keyboard or your code editor. Those can't own patents. That doesn't mean anything produced by those tools is public domain, it just means the attribution has to belong to a human.

The US Copyright Office disagrees. No work produced by a mechanical process, which includes LLMs, can be protected by copyright.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#144

Post by kube-system »

graemep wrote: post #139
kube-system wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI isn't a legal entity that can do anything, let alone hold a copyright. It is an inanimate box of numbers. The only two things that can transact with any legal system in any way are humans and groups of humans.

But a human can hold the copyright on the output of an AI - but the requirements for that are not clear in the US yet. They are clear in the UK but the government is thinking of changing the law.

A human can hold the copyright for anything for which they've contributed the requisite level of authorship and creativity. There are no tooling requirements or prohibitions.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#145

Post by otterley »

dcrazy wrote: post #33
cmiles8 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t protect it as copyright (which the US and others have separately said) then how are you “protecting” it? It’s not IP.

The ruling does not say whether or not the invention would be patentable had the appellant put his own name on the application.

If a person lists himself as the author but an LLM produces the work, they’re defrauding the government, which is a crime.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#146

Post by ano-ther »

alexpotato wrote: post #104
alzamos wrote: post #53

The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…

So I was an intern at Merck MANY years ago and they had this interesting comparison. Most companies only publish medical research findings on blockbuster drugs once both are true: 1. Production has started 2. A patent has been filed The reason for this is that they want to maximize the amount of production time under patent b/c that maximizes revenue. If you are the researcher, that means you have to wait until all o…

2 I recognize, 1 not so much. Patents are usually filed as early as possible, because you risk losing priority to someone else. And you cannot file a claim on inventions that are in the public domain.

But then it takes a decade or so to develop towards approval. You work together with outside researchers who lend their credibility and get attractive publication possibilities in return. Those publications also help to raise awareness with doctors and investors. Since some company researchers are also authors, this does indeed work as an incentive and is helpful for recruitment and ultimately more successful products.

To the core of the article: why would anyone want to file a patent with AI as a (co-)inventor? It's a tool, and it cannot have any ownership rights. And even if it did, it would diminish your share of royalties.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#147

Post by paulryanrogers »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #129
ClarityJones wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People talk about capitalism as if there is a choice; as if Gravity might not pull us towards earth.

I'd quibble with that. Capitalism is a choice, market dynamics are not. E.g. The Soviet Union successfully outlawed capitalism, and in response market dynamics made their country collapse.

Unregulated market dynamics also gave us child labor, slave trade, 12h work days, company scrip, companies ruling over governments, etc. A powerful engine without constraints is out of control.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#148

Post by otterley »

Robotbeat wrote: post #54
natebc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit in the copyright offices' report that i'm trying to square: >The Office concludes that, given current generally available technology, prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

In January 2025. It’s also not a court decision, effectively an executive branch directive.

The Copyright Office hasn’t changed its analysis, and courts will likely defer to it when they’re asked to settle a dispute about it.

Re: AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules

#149

Post by pclmulqdq »

michaelchisari wrote: post #81
layer8 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all inventions can be effectively kept secret, and patents also have the benefit that what would otherwise remain secrets gets published. I’m not in favor of the current patent landscape, but doing away completely with them would likely be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Obviously. Yet on balance, the ones that can't be kept secret may not be significant. I'm not making a judgement on what the ideal situation is, more so explaining why the referenced study could have come to its conclusion.

Literally any product you send to the consumer can be reverse-engineered at comparatively low cost. The world doesn’t just revolve around server-side software.
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