How Artificial Intelligence is set to disrupt our legal framework for Intellectual Property rights

It’s safe to say that most sectors will undergo significant disruption as a result of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.  AI will not only disrupt our business models but it will also disrupt our legal framework for the creation and exploitation of intellectual property (IP) rights, giving rise to new IP challenges for those seeking to develop and deploy new AI systems.

With AI systems already being used to generate content capable of attracting IP protection, working out exactly who owns the IP rights in this content will become increasingly important, especially when it comes to licensing or enforcing those rights.

Ownership of copyright is determined with reference to the “author” of a work.  When an AI system is used by a human solely as a tool for creating a work, the same human using the system will generally be considered “the author”.  But what happens when the AI system is more involved in creating the work, e.g. it is given a few simple inputs and the system goes on to create something which is much more than the sum of the inputs?

In the UK for example, the legislation states that where a work “is generated by a computer in circumstances such that there is no human author of the work” the author will be “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken”.  This provision doesn’t leave room for the AI itself to be considered the author.  Instead, it sets up a two-stage process to identify the author; first, look to see if there is a human author of the work and, if one can’t be found, look for the person “by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken”.  However, it is likely that disputes will arise at both stages when it comes to works which are generated by an AI system.  For example were the inputs sufficiently related to the outputs to classify the person who provided them as the author?  And who made the arrangements, was it the person who built the system, the person who trained it, or the person who fed it these specific inputs?

In order to apply for a patent, the application needs to identify one or more named inventors, with the common understanding that the inventor(s) are human beings.