The Corporation as an Inventive Artificial Intelligence

Prof. Ryan Abbott has gathered an amazing group of scholars for his new book on AI and IP that is forthcoming later this year. Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence (Edward Elgar Press, Forthcoming 2022) (R. Abbott, ed.).

In general, the various chapters focus on various aspects of machine-based AI. My contribution takes a different tack and instead consider idea that modern corporations and other non-human entities are also a form of artificial intelligence.  But, unlike their computer-bound AI cousins, corporations have already been granted the legal fiction of personhood status and many accompanying civil rights.[1]

I write:

An item still lacking from the corporate arsenal is inventorship rights. Yes, a corporation may own or license an invention and its resulting patents. And in fact, most patents are owned by non-human persons. But, the law persists in most nations as it has for more than 200 years that patentable inventions must begin with a human person, the inventor. In that sense, there is no “corporate invention” because corporate ownership of patent rights are derived rather than original—they stem from a transfer of property rights from human inventors who begins the chain of title.

This chapter considers the competing legal fictions of corporate personhood and corporate invention and how those factions operate in the transformed legal regime that places less emphasis on the role of human inventors and their inventive acts.

I would love to get your suggestions and feedback. [Read mine here]. You’ll be able to read the whole book soon, but meanwhile here are a few chapters that are available in draft form:

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[1] Dennis D. Crouch, Legal Fictions and the Corporation as an Inventive Artificial Intelligence, Forthcoming Chapter in Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence (R. Abbott, ed), https://ssrn.com/abstract=4081569.