AI cannot be the inventor of a patent, appeals court rules
This seems like the antebellum for an IP reckoning similar to what resulted in the DMCA in the United States in the late 90s. The technology is getting to the point where it makes the law as it stands pretty nonsensical in the face of what can be doneThe scope of patents in software and technology is already absurd, both because 12 years is an eternity for how quickly that industry moves, and because increasingly trivial "inventions" have been let through as the ability for patent officials to interpret complicated digital innovations according to patent law and policy has increasingly fallen behind the field. This is already a serious problem, but currently still takes expensive lawyers to take advantage of. Even if we make legal precedent that says that AI can't own patents, the advent of better purpose-specific text generation will quickly put patent trolling in the hands of laypeoplePersonally, I think the DMCA was a horrible mistake. The provisions it added to copyright created a ton of horrible precedent that led to the draconian control private companies exert over the lives of billions of people worldwide, justified in law by their intellectual property concerns. I believe that if Intellectual Property ever served a legitimate purpose, it has now run its course and needs to be dismantled. I hope that this new challenge moves us more in this direction, rather than some new awful legislative band-aid that attempts to preserve the status quo by destroying more of our rights