Ryan Abbott, associate professor of law at Southwestern Law School and adjunct assistant professor of medicine at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. (Courtesy photo)
This article has been adapted from Scott Graham’s intellectual property briefing Skilled in the Art.
We’ve heard some arguments against the idea of allowing artificially intelligent machines to be named inventors on patents. This week I’m giving equal time to professor Ryan Abbott of the University of Surrey School of Law and author of “The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Invention and the Law.” Abbott will be representing Stephen Thaler in the Eastern District of Virginia on April 6. Thaler is appealing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s rejection of a patent application that named only Thaler’s inventive machine, DABUS. (Thaler’s motion for summary judgment here, PTO’s opposition here, Thaler’s reply here.)
