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AI is a hot topic, particularly in the area of patent law and inventorship.

On Tuesday 21 September 2021, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent application (Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks and Designs [2021] EWCA Civ 1374).

Background

The present case related to two patent applications submitted to the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) by Dr Stephen Thaler. Both applications listed the inventor as ‘DABUS’, an AI machine built for the purpose of inventing, which had successfully come up with two patentable inventions. The UK IPO had refused to process either application (considering them withdrawn) as they failed to comply with the requirement to list an inventor and Dr Thaler was not entitled to apply for the patents. According to the Patents Act 1977, an inventor must be a ‘person’.

At the Court of First Instance, Mr. Justice Marcus Smith had upheld the IPO’s decision.Continue Reading UK Court of Appeal rules AI is not an inventor

On December 17, 2015, Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas awarded attorneys’ fees under 35 U.S.C. section 285 to defendants in a set of consolidated patent lawsuits initiated by eDekka LLC. 12/17 Order at 1. A prolific patent assertion entity, eDekka filed more than 200 lawsuits in 2014 and 2015 in the Eastern District of Texas, asserting a single patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,266,674, against numerous online retailers. eDekka claimed that these retailers had infringed the ’674 patent by offering a “shopping cart feature” on their e-commerce websites. The court had issued an earlier order September 21, 2015, in which it found the ’674 patent invalid for claiming unpatentable subject matter under Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014).  9/21 Order at 1. The September 21, 2015 order formed the basis for the court’s December 17 ruling awarding attorneys’ fees.
Continue Reading In a First, E.D. Tex. Finds Plaintiff’s Massive Litigation Campaign Asserting Patent Invalid Under Alice ‘Exceptional,’ and Awards Defendants Attorneys’ Fees

Eastern District of Texas District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who has the busiest patent docket in the United States, recently announced a new model procedure for handling the onslaught of so-called “101” or “Alice” motions. “Alice” refers to the United States Supreme Court’s June 2014 decision in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v.