The robot as inventor: Science fiction or reality?

The modern robot came into being in the mid-1950s when, due to increasing demand for consumer products, people needed machines that could assume the tasks of people. At first that mainly meant pre-programmed robot arms, but very soon it included the first mobile robots that could move independently and could ‘think’. In 1968, Stanford University developed the robot “Shakey”. Equipped with sensors and motorized wheels, Shakey could recognize the shape of objects and move those objects, among other tasks. The ideas of Rodney Brooks and Andrea Stein from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about robots that behave as people and can interact with people, met with a great deal of resistance in the early 1990s but were quickly imitated. Since then, universities in the United States and Europe have worked hard on humanoid robots, such as those used in health care or security. The development of humanoid robots is in full swing in Japan, as well.

For a long time now, robots have been more than just servants who toil and perform boring work for us. They are able to think creatively. What is illustrative here is the invention in 2019 of a (soft drink) can that was given a ‘fractal’ shape instead of a round one. This made is easier for robot arms to pick up multiple cans. This can was not invented by a person, however, but by DABUS, a computer system that works based on artificial intelligence. Dr. Stephen Thaler, the creator of DABUS, filed various patent applications, in which he indicated that DABUS was the inventor. Thaler came away empty-handed in Europe and the United Kingdom, but the South African patent office granted his application. After Thaler’s application was not taken up by the Australian patent office, the Federal Court of Australia determined that, although a patent can never be applied for or obtained through artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence can be an inventor. And even though the Virginia Eastern District Court rejected Thaler’s appeal of the denial of his patent application in the United States, that court also found that it could not exclude that artificial intelligence will one day be so developed that it will indeed fall under the definition of an inventor. This was enough food for thought for us.

Will the robot be the inventor of the future? Must patent law soon be reconsidered? Time will tell.