June Edition 2023

81 The Israeli Commissioner of Patents (“the Commissioner”): Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be considered an "inventor" within the meaning of such term in the Israeli Patents Law, 1967 (“the Patents Law”); therefore, AI cannot own or transfer an invention. Similar to court holdings in the USA, England, Europe and other jurisdictions around the world, the Commissioner also did not see it fit to accept Dr. Stephen Thaler's patent applications for an AI-generated invention. The named inventor in patent applications filed by Dr. Thaler is stated to be an AI machine known as DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience). In support of the applications, Dr. Thaler filed a declaration attesting to the fact that the inventive process was arrived at solely by DABUS without any human involvement whatsoever. The starting point for statutory construction is the language of the law and, particularly, the plain, natural meaning of the stated language. Thus, after reviewing the language of the Patents Law, and the dictionary definition of the term "inventor", the Commissioner determined that the term "inventor" in the Patents Law is intended to refer in its usual and ordinary sense to a natural person (a human being). AI as an Inventor

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