Creative Machines: AI and IP Rights in Digital Authorship and Patentable Inventions

The evolution of the concepts of “author” and “inventor” in the technology age has caused ownership in artificial intelligence (AI) generated works to become an area of contention. Conflicting, often indeterminable interests have surfaced between stakeholders involved in the creation of AI capable of creating content. The law has taken a reactive approach, as it has done in past with novel copyright law challenges emerging in the digital landscape where content is being disseminated on different platforms subject to a variety of statutes and contractual terms. This article deals with computational creativity in the context of intellectual property (IP) rights in AI-generated content generally; and more specifically, the issue of rights ownership in AI authored works and patentable inventions. It investigates the implications of machine learning on IP rights in the context of Australian, United Kingdom and United States law; and considers whether current IP frameworks effectively accommodate AI creativity.