Imagine an AI system that, entirely on its own, invents a long-sought medicine that cures cancer. No human contributed to its creative process. Should the law allow such an invention to be patented? This is Part 2 of a series exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping intellectual property law.
The short answer to the question is NO. Patent protection should be denied to inventions generated solely by artificial intelligence. The Intellectual Property Code provides that only humans may be named as inventors. An invention generated without, or with minimal, human participation cannot be attributed to a human and therefore cannot qualify for patent benefits. The Constitution provides the underlying rule: protection extends to scientists and researchers, not to a machine. (Art. XIV, Sec. 13). This position is consistent with the prevailing rule in major economies abroad.
Why write about this, then, if the law and international practice already appear settled?
The answer is simple: saying “the rule is settled” does not answer the normative question. The deeper question is why the rule continues to be contested — why cases abroad keep forcing jurisdictions to confront the possibility of recognizing AI as inventors in place of humans. The DABUS cases illustrate recent attempts abroad to designate an AI system as an inventor; however, courts in both the United States and the United Kingdom rejected such claims.
Thus, the fact that the so-called “settled rule” remains contested demonstrates that the discussion is far from settled. Unless we are clear on the foundation on which IP law is grounded, this question will keep resurfacing, no matter how many jurisdictions rule the same way.
Part of what’s driving that pressure is an evolving Inventive Step — the degree of improvement over the existing state of the art required to merit a patent. The rule remains that the technical advancement must be significant; an invention representing no real improvement does not merit protection (Pearl & Dean v. SM, Inc., 2003).
AI is changing how easily that “significant threshold” can be reached. An AI system can now generate inventions based on a description of the desired medicine with a prompt targeted at meeting the inventive step threshold. What once took human inventors years, machines may now accomplish in weeks or months. That may sound like an exaggeration. It is fast becoming our reality.
Isn’t this good for humanity? If machines help us develop medicines faster and more efficiently, we may reach long-sought medicines, or any inventions, sooner than expected.
But this same technical advancement risks displacing the development of inventions born from human effort — a concern I raised in my earlier article. There is a genuine risk in replacing humans in the innovation or creativity process.
To illustrate: a researcher at a pharmaceutical company spends years designing new cancer medicines. With AI-driven drug design software, that researcher is increasingly relegated to evaluating compounds the AI has already generated. Discoveries may come faster, but there are fewer opportunities for the researcher — or any inventor — to be creative and innovative. This is how AI can increase productivity while simultaneously deskilling highly trained professionals.
As discussed in Part 1, the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas views work as that which allows man to be creative. The work of the researcher, engineer, or inventor is precisely where human creativity takes place. When AI autogenerates the invention, the human moves from that creative capacity to merely supervising, or rubber-stamping, an output. This is the theme Pope Leo raises in that document: he cautions against outsourcing creativity, intelligence, and judgment to machines, warning that excessive reliance on artificial intelligence risks an atrophy of human capacities — deskilling the workforce, diminishing the meaning of labor, and reducing individuals to passive consumers of machine-generated outputs. For man, work serves as an expression of his dignity.
From the standpoint of intellectual property, the invention or innovation born from human effort is recognized as an expression of one’s personality and creativity, and it is precisely for that reason that it merits protection. Intellectual property exists, at the very least, to respect and safeguard human expression, intellect, and labor.
Intellectual property law, then, presupposes man’s self-consciousness and self-determination as a necessary “anthropological” condition for any properly human act — of which inventions and other intellectual creations are but manifestations. In other words, the creation of intellectual property requires three human attributes: reflection, expression, and will. These are precisely what distinguish man from lesser creatures — animals and plants — and, I would add, from machines as well. This is what I mean when I emphasize in my IP law class that intellectual property is an expression of Man’s Original Solitude (cf. Part 1).
Whether patent law should extend to inventions without a human inventor is an existential question about the nature of humanity itself. As artificial intelligence exercises functions unique to our higher faculties — creativity, innovation — it effectively diminishes humanity’s capacity for reflection, expression, and will.
Let me conclude by saying that current patent law rightly denies incentives to AI-autogenerated inventions. I recognize this is an oversimplified answer to a complicated problem. But I hope we never have to reach the point — where every researcher or scientist simply relies on machines to do the inventing for them — before we recognize that we were right to take this position. I trust this article at least helps us realize what is really at stake in the debate over the non-patentability of AI-generated inventions.
Should a separate legal framework be created to protect AI-generated works? It would be a welcome development — but not at the cost of the anthropological regression I have described above.
This article was first published by BusinessWorld at bworldonline.com. It is only for general informational and educational purposes and is not offered as and does not constitute legal advice or opinion.
Atty. Alex Ferdinand S. Fider is a Senior Partner of the Intellectual Property Department of the Angara Abello Concepcion Regala & Cruz Law Offices (ACCRALAW).
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