By: Bloomberg
Feb 18, 2020
Computers using artificial intelligence are discovering medicines, designing better golf clubs and creating video games.
But are they inventors?
Patent offices around the world are grappling with the question of who — if anyone — owns innovations developed using AI. The answer may upend what’s eligible for protection and who profits as AI transforms entire industries.
“There are machines right now that are doing far more on their own than to help an engineer or a scientist or an inventor do their jobs,” said Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “We will get to a point where a court or legislature will say the human being is so disengaged, so many levels removed, that the actual human did not contribute to the inventive concept.”