‘AI Inventor’ Update – DABUS Decision Goes to Federal Court

In a fairly predictable development, Stephen Thaler has asked the Federal Court of Australia to review the Patent Office’s finding in February that a patent application cannot be validly filed in this country naming a machine as inventor.  The ‘Application for Judicial Review’ was filed on 9 March 2021 in the Victorian Division of the court, and has been assigned number VID108/2021.  Having been represented by Davies Collison Cave (DCC) in the patent application filed at the Patent Office, Thaler is represented in the Federal Court proceeding by Allens.  The reasons for this change are unclear – DCC incorporates a legal practice as well as its patent and trade marks attorney practice, and could presumably have handled the Federal Court application.  However, it is not unusual for applicants to switch representatives when moving from the Patent Office to the courts, either from necessity, or due to a perception that different firms have particular strengths in different areas of practice.

While the case may be casually characterised as an ‘appeal’ against the Patent Office decision, it is not technically an appeal under the Patents Act 1990.  The Act, and the Patents Regulations 1991, expressly set out the various decisions that are appealable to the Federal Court, and the lapsing of an application for failing to identify a valid inventor is not such a decision.  Instead, the application for review is made under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (ADJR Act), which provides more generally for review of administrative decisions by the Federal Court.

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Tags: Artificial intelligence, Australia, DABUS, Inventorship, Patent law

Free, Streamlined Extensions of Time to End at IP Australia, but COVID Impact Can Still be Considered Under ‘Normal’ Procedures

Since April last year, IP Australia has provided a streamlined process under which most deadlines associated with Australian patent, trade marks, and design rights – including evidence deadlines in opposition matters – could be extended by up to three months, at no charge, if the extension is required ‘due to the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic’.  That program ends on 31 March 2021.  From 1 April 2021, extensions of time will still be available for those impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, but will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Under the streamlined program, a party seeking an extension of time has been required only to tick a box in order to make a declaration that the impacts of COVID-19 had prevented a relevant act from being carried out within time.  This is much simpler (and cheaper) than the usual process, under which detailed evidence is required – typically in the form of a formal declaration or affidavit, along with any relevant accompanying exhibits – demonstrating exactly how events and/or circumstances have prevented the deadline from being met.  Additionally, official fees have been waived under the streamlined program.  These are typically based on the number of months of additional time requested, and can be quite substantial, e.g. up to A$1500 for a three-month extension of time to file evidence in a patent opposition.

While a blanket waiver of fees is unusual, it is clearly within the power of IP Australia to choose not to levy a fee for any service that it provides.  However, it is not within the agency’s power to waive the requirements of the Patents Act 1990 or the Patents Regulations 1991 (or corresponding legislation and regulations relating to other IP rights) with regard to the grounds upon which extensions of time may be legitimately granted.  In principle, therefore, streamlined extensions have generally been considered under existing provisions allowing for deadlines to be extended where ‘circumstances beyond the control’ of the responsible person(s) have prevented an action from being taken within the required time.  Ticking of the ‘COVID-19 box’ has thus been treated as prima facie evidence that the pandemic was, indeed, the cause of a failure to meet a deadline, with IP Australia warning that a false declaration could put the validity of the applicant’s IP rights at risk.

The initiative to make obtaining COVID-19 extensions simpler and cheaper was further complicated by the fact that in proceedings involving other parties, IP Australia is usually obliged to give those other parties an opportunity to comment on, and/or object to, the grant of an extension of time.  This obligation could not be suspended, and there were at least two patent matters in which objections were lodged.

With practices and procedures for requesting extensions of time returning to normal (or, at least, ‘COVID-normal’), it is to be expected that any party requiring an extension as a result of the impact of COVID-19 will bear a greater onus to demonstrate exactly why an extension is justified.

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Tags: Australia, COVID-19, Extensions of time, Patent Office

Australian Patent Office Rejects Amazon Cloud Computing Invention as Patent-Ineligible

A delegate of the Commissioner of Patents has refused an application (no. 2018204629) by Amazon Technologies, Inc (Amazon) on the basis that it is not for a patent-eligible invention under Australia’s ‘manner of manufacture’ requirement: Amazon Technologies, Inc [2021] APO 7.  Amazon’s claimed invention relates to the execution of processing tasks within a cloud computing system, presumably such as its own Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.  Specifically, it provides a mechanism for applications executing on ‘virtual machines’ within the cloud system to access additional resources as required during bursts of high demand.

This is yet another case in which a computer-implemented invention that appears at least superficially ‘technical’ has been found to be unpatentable because it is, as a matter of ‘substance’, in fact an ineligible business innovation, rather than a technical innovation.  There are many, many, words in Amazon’s main claims, and a lot of them seem highly technical, principally because they define the operation of a process within a technical system.  But does this mean that the inventive process is, itself, technical in nature?  The delegate determined that it is not.  He found that Amazon’s claims were directed to a scheme in which ‘business rules’ are applied for scheduling processing tasks, while the scheduler itself was performing only its ‘usual independent function’, with ‘no improved operation of the computing technology’.

In this case, I think that the delegate’s decision is a reasonable application of the law on patent-eligibility of computer-implemented inventions, as it has been interpreted by the Australian courts.  It is, however, a long decision, which could not fairly be described as light reading.  It is unfortunate that decision-making in this area of the law has become increasingly arcane and obtuse.  So rather than picking over the delegate’s decision, dissecting the lengthy patent claims, or reviewing the Federal Court authorities, I am instead going to do my best to explain Amazon’s invention and why it failed the patent-eligibility test in my own way, as plainly as I can.  And while I believe that the delegate’s decision is justified under the current law, I shall also explain why I think the law under-emphasises the technical context in which inventions such as Amazon’s are devised, and why a more nuanced approach might be more appropriate.

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Tags: Australia, Computer programs, Patentable subject matter

DABUS Denied Down Under – Australian Patent Office Formally Rejects AI Inventor

Back in December 2020 I reported on the progress of an Australian patent application naming an ‘artificial intelligence’ going by the name DABUS (‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’) as inventor.  The application – no. 2019363177 – was derived from an international application filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), and names Dr Stephen Thaler, the developer of DABUS, as applicant.  At that time, the Australian Patent Office had raised an objection to the naming of a machine as inventor, and sought further submissions from the applicant on this issue.  I anticipated that the case would be referred to a hearing officer to determine the matter by way of a formal decision, and predicted that Dr Thaler’s rather unconventional assertions that an AI can be an inventor, and that he is entitled to receive any resulting patents by virtue of ownership of the AI, were unlikely to be accepted by the Patent Office.

That has all now come to pass, with a decision of a delegate of the Commission of Patents issued on 9 February 2021: Stephen L. Thaler [2021] APO 5.  In accordance with the plan language of the Australian Patents Act, and established legal principles, the delegate has determined that a patent can only be granted to a person, that a machine is not a person, and that there is no mechanism whereby the right to apply for a patent on an invention devised by a machine can be legally transferred to any person.

In short, a patent application naming a non-human inventor cannot be validly filed, regardless of who is named as the applicant.  A corollary of this (although not addressed in the decision) is that a patent on an invention devised by a machine can never be validly granted, even if the true nature of the inventor is concealed from the Patent Office, because there is simply no mechanism for any named applicant to derive a legal right to apply.  In practice, applicants are required to provide the Patent Office with a declaration of entitlement, and in the case of a machine invention this declaration would necessarily be invalid and/or false.

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Tags: Artificial intelligence, Australia, DABUS, Inventorship, Patent law

Why Do Applicants File Divisional Applications, and Are They as Important as ‘Original’ Applications?

In its 2020 IP Report, IP Australia introduced a novel measure of patent application filing intensity to identify top applicants – namely, the number of ‘original’ applications filed, excluding any divisional applications.  For the uninitiated, divisional applications are patent applications that are based on subject matter that is ‘divided out’ from previously filed applications (typically termed ‘parent’ applications), as distinct from ‘original’ applications that comprise new content filed for the very first time.  I took issue with the ‘original applications’ metric, on the basis that I did not consider there to be any coherent or logical basis for simply ignoring divisional applications when comparing applicant activity.  My views have not changed significantly over the intervening months.

It is certainly true that not all divisional applications are created equal.  At one end of the spectrum there are divisionals filed primarily as a way to buy additional examination time, with the parent application being allowed to lapse.  To distinguish these kinds of divisionals we can call them ‘continued examination’ applications. At the other extreme, there are divisional applications that are filed for the primary purpose for which they exist – to enable an applicant to obtain a patent for a distinct (second or subsequent) invention disclosed, but not claimed, in the original application – where the original application typically goes on to be granted, while the divisional proceeds independently.

Within the latter category of divisionals, there are also degrees of ‘independence’.  Sometimes the invention claimed in a divisional application is closely related to that of the original application.  For example, it might be substantially the same invention, where the applicant is seeking a different (e.g. broader) scope of protection.  In many cases, however, the invention claimed in a divisional application is distinct from the original invention.  There are numerous reasons why an applicant may end up disclosing multiple inventions in a single initial filing, either intentionally or unintentionally, and a discussion of all of those reasons is beyond the scope of this article.  But regardless of how it comes about, such an initial filing is best viewed as equivalent to a ‘bunch’ of applications, all of which are just as entitled to be counted as if they had been filed separately on the same day.

It is difficult to identify the purpose of each divisional application, other than by drilling down and comparing what is actually claimed against the parent application from which it has been divided.  However, some information can be gleaned from the eventual fate of the parent application.  For example, if the parent lapses without ever being accepted, it might be inferred that the divisional was filed for the purpose of continuing examination of the claims.  Conversely, if the parent application is accepted, then it is more likely that the divisional application was filed to pursue claims to a further invention, or to an alternative scope of the original invention.

To get an initial idea of the way in which applicants use divisional applications in Australia, I have analysed the outcomes for parent applications since 2002.  Over this period, divisional applications have become considerably more ‘popular’, with the number of divisional filings increasing more than threefold, compared with an overall increase in standard application filings of just 30%.  Most of this growth occurred between 2010 and 2016, with a slight decline in divisional applications from 2018.  Over time, around 70% of parent applications have been accepted, indicating that the majority of divisionals are not filed merely for the purpose of continuing examination of the original application.

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Tags: Australia, Divisional applications, Patent analytics