A patent application was filed as part of an international project aimed at formulating policies for granting intellectual property rights to inventions created by artificial intelligence. The application stated that the applicant for the registration of the invention is the representative of the inventor, an artificial intelligence (AI) machine, which generated the inventions autonomously and without human involvement. The Patent Registrar rejected the applications.
The Court affirmed the Registrar's decision because a machine cannot be an "inventor" according to patent registration regulations. The Israeli Patents Law allows patent registration in the name of its inventor, where the simple and accepted interpretation of the term "inventor" refers to a human being. There are legal actions in the law that require such capacity, such as: the right to demand the inclusion of the inventor's name in the patent, the ability to waive rights and the ability to enter into a contract. In our case, becuase the machine is not a human being and lacks legal personality, it cannot be deemed an "inventor" or perform the legal actions required of an inventor under the law as it cannot transfer ownership of the invention to another person, thereby breaking the chain of ownership required by law. Thus, the patents cannot be registered.