The Role of Intellectual Property Laws in Artificial Intelligence

Satpreet Kaur Siledar
3 min readOct 1, 2021

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The Author intends to examine the legal challenges of Intellectual Property Rights concerning Artificial Intelligence (AI). Researches in AI have predicted that AI will outperform humans in the coming decade in several areas such as content generation, translation, and driving. Although AI is making a foray into Intellectual Property, it still poses some threats from which existing laws leave us unprotected; all that, although its rise has so far occurred in a regulatory vacuum. The lighting advancement in AI technology has triggered an alerting signal from every side, including calls from government regulations starting with Intellectual Property law, as it is the first branch of law to deal with innovations before they even come into being. Little has been attained to adapt to such a fact. The IP legal framework needs to adjust to the thorny issues of ownership and patenting in the AI era if we don’t desire to delay in gleaning the gains of this new epoch. And it must adapt rapidly.

Most Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regimes are not in favor of getting patent applications registered in the name of AI systems as an inventor, on account of it not being a legal person. In 2017, patent applications were filed in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States of America, and an AI system named DABUS was named the inventor in these applications. The same applications were rejected in all three jurisdictions. Apart from this, another issue that is to be considered in the case of protecting AI systems under IPR is the practical difficulties faced in the patentability of the AI systems with regards to the subject-matter eligibility standards. Algorithms in most jurisdictions qualify as fuzzy systems lacking technical characters and thus can’t be protected under IP Laws. Until and unless a system is given the technical character of software, it can’t be covered. However, in most jurisdictions, to adapt to the dynamic nature of the technology and its rising applications, IP regulators have devised guidelines concerning the examination and initiatives to encourage patent protection.

AI can create work of its own protected under IP Laws if otherwise created by humans. So the question that arises: Will AI software developer (s) be entitled to the IPR of the work created by an AI? OR Whether the user or licensee of the AI who is training the AI with new inputs resulting in new work created by AI would have the IPR? Presently, for an author to acquire copyright, the creative work must originate from an author’s sufficient skills, labor, and judgment. The challenge before the regulator in current times is to determine if AI-generated content has used these factors. Further, in order to acquire a patent, an invention must include novelty, inventive steps, and applicability which is difficult to determine in AI-generated creations.

IP Laws aim to give exclusive rights to the creator of the innovator and creators. Receiving such a right by an AI would be inconsistent with the aims and objectives of IP Laws. If the legislature considered creativity and innovation over the betterment of the human race, that would be contrary to the IP Laws and the public policy. Thus there should be a reasonable balance between the two. In 2017, Saudi Arabia granted citizenship rights to a humanoid named Sophia, an AI who inherited all the rights presented to the citizen. Nonetheless, it is essential to address the unwavering line for creating works recognized under IP law and the possible liability consequences caused by AI which helps balance the commercialization and utilization of innovations, benefits the public interest and facilitates the true objectives of intellectual property law.

Author- Advocate Satpreet Kaur Siledar

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