legAIstatus - Analyses of status of slaves in Roman law - resolution for inventorship/ ownership issue of AI systems in patent law

该项目旨在分析奴隶在罗马法中的法律的地位，以解决人工智能（AI）自主产生的发明的发明权问题。这个问题出现在向欧洲专利局（EPO）提交的专利申请中，其中DABUS的发明者Stephen Thaler将DABUS命名为发明者。申请书中称，他作为雇主获得了专利权。还指出，他作为DABUS的所有人，应被承认为所请求专利的受让人。欧洲专利局驳回了该申请，理由是“发明人”一词是指《欧洲专利公约》规定的真实的人，而认可机构不具有法律的人格。由于认可机构并不具备与自然人及法律的人格相若的法律的人格，因此不能被雇用或转让权利。在这一点上，罗马法中奴隶的地位可以为AI发明人与自然人或法律的人申请人之间转让专利申请权提供一个法律的解决方案。这种解决方案的优点是，与“对人工智能产生的发明不提供专利保护”和“授予人工智能法律的人格”的方法相比，它提供了一种中间解决方案。该项目的目标是通过给予受罗马法启发的人工智能特殊法律的地位，填补申请人和发明人之间的法律的空白。

This project aims to analyse the legal status of slaves in Roman law as a resolution to inventorship issue of the inventions autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence (AI). This issue arose with a patent application filed to the European Patent Office (the EPO) in which DABUS, an AI, is named as inventor by Stephen Thaler, the inventor of DABUS. In the application, it was stated thathe had acquired the right to the patent as employer. It was also stated that he, as the owner of DABUS, was to be acknowledged as the assignee of the requested patent. The application was rejected by the EPO on the ground that the term "inventor" refers to a real person under the European Patent Convention and the AIs do not have a legal personality. As the AIs do not have legal personality comparable to natural and legal persons, they can be neither employed nor transfer rights. At this point, the status of slaves in Roman law can provide a legal solution for transferring the right to apply for patent between AI inventor and natural or legal person applicant. The advantage of this solution is that it offers an intermediate resolution comparing to the "no patent protection to AI generated inventions" and "granting AI legal personality" approaches. The goal of this project is to fulfil the legal gap between the applicant and inventor by granting special legal status to AI which is inspired from Roman law.