Patentability of inventions created by AI—the DABUS claims from an Indian perspective
R. D. Deshpande, Karan Kamath · Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice · 2020
The conception of human-like machines is quite old—as early as in the early 17th century, René Descartes theorized a machine that could ‘reply appropriately to everything that may be said in its presence’.1 The modern term ‘artificial intelligence’ (‘AI’) was coined in 1956 by computer scientist John McCarthy as part of a Dartmouth College workshop that is now regarded as the founding of AI studies.2 Following this beginning, it was only a matter of time until the advent of AI machines that could, by themselves, without any contribution by humans, create patentable inventions (‘computational invention/s’). However, the first computational invention to seek patent protection with the AI system listed as an inventor were claims made in 2018/19 on behalf of the Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS) in the UK, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the USA. Prior to this, neither did patent laws take computational inventions into consideration, nor had AI machines sought to apply for patents. The applications, therefore, marked a watershed moment in the crossroads between patent law and AI history.