By Aditi Yashasvi[*]
The role of Intellectual Property Rights of inventions based on Artificial Intelligence is discussed in this article. The article deals with the growing interest of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Intellectual Property. Firstly, the article explains the meaning and interconnection between Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property elaboratively. The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation of a wide range of intellectual goods for consumers. This article also addresses the question of threat to the privacy of the AI software and how IP laws can protect such infringements. The article talks about patents and copyrights of various unique software in the field of AI and the ownership of such intangible creations. It, further, takes an example to throw light on the new era of the Artificial Intelligence. It tries to address the important questions related to the issues and conflicts arising out of the realm of artificial intelligence. In the broader sense, the laws governing the AI inventions must be able to protect and reward the inventor for the benefit of the society. It should also provide for equitable distribution of the benefits of the invention across all sections of the society.
Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science where a brain outside of a human’s brain is created to let it make cerebral decisions for a person. It consists of artificial neural networks which are essentially computational models[1]. These computational models, which are mathematical operations and a set of parameters, give output synonymous to human intelligence. As the hype around AI has accelerated, over the years, vendors have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use AI. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for coding, writing and training machine learning algorithms. Intellectual property is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect[2]. Trademarks, patents, copyrights, Trade Dress and Trade Secrets are some of the types of intellectual property. It comes forward as no surprise that this new era of technology encounters intellectual property in various ways. There are three main overlapping zones between Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: AI as a technology that can assist in the management of intellectual property rights, intellectual property as a regime or protecting the unique software of AI, and IP as an obstacle to the transparency of AI systems and algorithms. As it can be seen, the relationship between both of these is reciprocal: IP influences AI and AI influences IP. Moreover, the overview of the overlap between both can be beneficial as well as conflictual.
Intellectual property is a legal system that can help protect AI. AI is likely to have a significant impact on the creation, production and distribution of economic and cultural goods and services. One of the main goals of IP policy is to stimulate innovation and creativity in the economic and technological areas, where AI and IP intersect efficiently. Patent and copyright codes are the most relevant systems of protection in terms of AI, especially when inventions can be autonomously generated by AI. There have been several reported cases of applications for patent protection in which the applicant has named an AI application as the inventor. The question here arose that, Should the law permit that the AI application be named as the inventor, or should it be required that a human being is named as the inventor? If so, should the law give instructions on the way to determine the human inventor or let the stakeholders take this decision? Moreover, the main question is who should be recorded as the owner of a patent involving an AI application (the true owner of an AI software)? Are current legal or constitutional provisions sufficient to consider the specifications of inventions generated by AI or should specific legal provisions be introduced? The condition of disclosure and introducing it to the world could be challenging for an invention generated by an AI application. Depending on the answers to these questions, the lawmaker may be led to consider that a unique system of IP rights for AI-generated inventions should be raised to adjust innovation incentives for AI.
While AI applications are capable of producing literary and artistic works autonomously, the question of copyright claims could be raised too. The main question raised here is whether copyright should be attributed to original literary and artistic works that are autonomously generated by AI or should a human creator be required to claim the rights over their work? The questions raised above boil down to the overlap of AI and IP as important and interesting observations and conflicts that have not yet been addressed. It should be encouraged to find a balance between Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence so that machine learning can be utilized to its maximum capacity without worrying about its piracy and ownership issues.
In October, Saudi Arabia became the first country to grant citizenship to an AI robot developed by Hanson Robotics called Sophia, who also became the first AI robot to gain citizenship. After much controversy, she was able to attain certain rights as a citizen and hence, she also said that she wanted to have a child one day, presumably to create another AI personality like her – Sophia II. So, Will Sophia have the patentable right for her progeny, or will Hanson Robotics, Sophia’s creator? At present, the European Patent Office, which sets a high standard for patentability, states that it would depend on the ‘technical’ versus ‘non-technical’ features that eventually contribute to the ‘inventive step’. A computer processing non-technical information in some non-obvious way may not be reliable enough to be considered inventive unless there is a technical effect. However, these standards vary around the world, and the impact artificial intelligence will have on IP rights is yet to be seen.
[*] Student (Intern), BA. LL.B. (H). Amity Law School, Noida
[1] Journal of Scientific Research, Volume 65, Issue 2, 2021,
[2] “Understanding Industrial Property”. World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved 6 December 2018.