Artificial Intelligence’s Role in the Field of Intellectual Property
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a digital frontier that will have a profound impact on the world. It will have immense technological, economic, and social consequences and will transform the way humans work, live, and produce and distribute goods and services. Although it is too early to say, it is clear that AI will affect traditional intellectual property (IP) concepts.
Commercial AI-generated music and AI-created inventions are not so far, and it is expected that it will define the concepts of the ‘composer’, ‘author’, and ‘inventor’. But how that will happen is not clear yet.
The fundamental goals of the intellectual property (IP) system have always encouraged new technologies and creative works, and to create a sustainable economic basis for invention and creation. From a purely financial perspective, if other aims of the IP system such as ‘just reward’ and moral rights are set aside, there is no reason not to use IP to reward AI-generated inventions or creations.
The wide use of AI technologies will define established IP concepts such as patents, designs, literary and artistic works. For instance, the life sciences generate vast quantities of data that have significant value but do not constitute an invention in the classical sense. But before that, working out on the rights and obligations that attach to them is required. Many argue that as data is a foundation of AI, it should be freely available to enable the development of AI and other applications.
Data and algorithms raise several fundamental IP-related questions like how one creates property rights in an algorithm that is continuously changing.
Demand for IP rights continues to surpass economic growth rates across the globe. The IP system is known is not certainly going out of trend. It is being used more than ever. But new challenges are emerging and the result may be an additional layer of IP instead of replacing the existing system.
The flip side is whether AI can own IP or it can infringe IP. If an AI machine can generate subject matter, who will be held responsible if that subject matter violates third party IP? The issue that arises here is copyright infringement requires actual copying. The author of the infringement work must have had access to the work protected by copyright. In the case of an AI machine that is expected to have access to everything on the internet, the trouble of showing that the infringer had access to the protected work might be much easier to overcome.
AI systems will increasingly play an essential role in IP administration in the future.
