The Potential for Positronic Machines as Inventors: An Intellectual Property Framework for Artificial General Intelligence

Abstract

Current United States Intellectual Property (IP) policy only allows patents to be awarded to human beings, largely due to the necessity that an inventor be an individual capable of conception. This prevents Artificial Intelligence (AI) from being recognized as an inventor and awarded IP rights. This article explicates the need for an entirely new IP framework to evaluate Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a type of AI recently acknowledged by the USPTO as problematic for the U.S. IP system, and its impact on IP laws of the future.