Artificial Inventors

This short chapter reviews the application of patent incentives to inventions made by AI machines. It discusses two policy goals of patents in this space, namely acceleration of innovation with the help of AI but also the need to continue human progress. It reviews decisions by several courts, most of which have (correctly) decided that, as the law now stands, machines cannot be "inventors". Moreover, financial incentives apply to humans and legal persons (managed by humans), not machines. Patent law should continue to promote human ingenuity