Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
Recently, the United Kingdom Supreme Court decided that only natural persons can be considered inventors. A year before, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a similar decision. In fact, so have many the courts all over the world. This Article analyses these decisions, argues that the courts got it right, and finds that artificial inventorship is at odds with patent law doctrine, theory, and philosophy. The Article challenges the intellectual property (IP) post-humanists, exposing the analytical and normative perils of their argumentation, and recommends against getting rid of the nominally central place of humans in the law. This response to IP post-humanism rests in equal measure on patent doctrine, legal causation, and the mythology which creates and justifies the law.
Recommended Citation
Blaszczyk, Matt, "Impossibility of Artificial Inventors" (2024). Fellow, Adjunct, Lecturer, and Research Scholar Works. 8.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/research/8
Comments
This is a pre-publication. A version of this Article has been published in September 2024 issue of the Intellectual Property Forum published by the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand. See Matt Blaszczyk, Impossibility of Artificial Inventors, 137 INTELL. PROP. F. 39 (2024). An edited version is scheduled for publication in the December 2024 issue of the UC Law Science and Technology Journal. See Matt Blaszczyk, Impossibility of Artificial Inventors, 16 Hastings Sci. & Tech. L.J. (forthcoming, 2024).