AI Bots Lack Human Touch to Be Inventors, UK Top Court Rules (2)

Artificial intelligence programs can’t be named as an inventor for patents, the UK’s top court said in a crucial ruling refusing to put machines on a near-equal footing with humans.

Britain’s Supreme Court rejected the request by Imagination Engines Inc. founder Stephen Thaler, who sought patents naming his AI machine DABUS as the inventor. Laws on patents require an inventor to be a natural person and “DABUS is not a person at all,” the judges said, dismissing Thaler’s appeal unanimously.

While the ruling follows the same stance as decisions in the USand the European Union, it’s the first by ...