Patent Clause and the Patent Act require that the statute be read to encompass artificial intelligence machines as “inventors.” Plaintiff argues that:
Allowing patents for AI-Generated Inventions will result in more innovation. It will incentivize the development of AI capable of producing patentable output by making that output more valuable. … Patents also incentivize commercialization and disclosure of information, and this incentive applies with equal force to a human and an AI-Generated Invention. By contrast, denying patent protection for AI-Generated Inventions threatens to undermine the patent system by failing to encourage the production of socially valuable inventions.
Patent law also protects the moral rights of human inventors and listing an AI as an inventor where appropriate would protect these human rights. … [I]t will discourage individuals from listing themselves as inventors without having contributed to an invention’s conception merely because their name is needed to obtain a patent. Allowing a person to be listed as an inventor for an AI-Generated Invention would not be unfair to an AI, which has no interest in being acknowledged, but allowing people to take credit for work they have not done would devalue human inventorship.
[Dkt. No. 19] at 11–12. Accordingly, plaintiff argues that the Court should seek to give effect to Congress’s intent “to create a system that would encourage innovation, as well as to promote disclosure of information and commercialization of new technologies.” Id. at 12. Plaintiff provides no support for his argument that these policy considerations should override the plain meaning of a statutory term. Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that there must be “some indication” that Congress intended a particular provision to be one of the “rare statute[s]” that contains a different meaning for the term “individual.” Mohamad, 566 U.S. at 455, 132 S.Ct. 1702 (emphasis in original). Accordingly, plaintiffs position that the USPTO must “provide … evidence that Congress intended to prohibit patents on AI-[g]enerated [i]nventions” has the burden exactly backwards. [Dkt. No. 28] at 12.
The Supreme Court and Federal Circuit have explicitly held that policy considerations cannot overcome a statute’s plain language, and that “[m]atters of policy are for Congress, not the courts, to decide.” Fisons PLC v. Quigg, 876 F.2d 99, 101 (Fed. Cir. 1989)[1]; Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen Inc., – U.S. —, 137 S. Ct. 1664, 1678, 198 L.Ed.2d 114 (2017) (“Even if we were persuaded that Amgen had the better of the policy arguments, those arguments could not overcome the statute’s plain language, which is our ‘primary guide’ to Congress’ preferred policy.”); see also Kimble v. Marvel Entm’t, LLC, 576 U.S. 446, 463–64, 135 S.Ct. 2401, 192 L.Ed.2d 463 (2015) (holding that, although one litigant “also [sought] support from the wellspring of all patent policy: the goal of promoting innovation[,] …. [c]laims that a statutory precedent has serious and harmful consequences for innovation are
- ↑ Specifically, the Supreme Court held:
Fisons makes what can only be characterized as a “policy argument” pointing to statements of lofty goals indicating that Congress broadly sought to encourage pharmaceutical innovation by enacting the 1984 Act. … It is irrelevant, however, that we might agree with Fisons that, as a matter of policy, Congress might better achieve its goals through a more liberal grant of patent term extension benefits. Matters of policy are for Congress, not the courts, to decide.
Fisons PLC v. Quigg, 876 F.2d 99, 101 (Fed. Cir. 1989).
