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。这个问题源于向欧洲专利局(EPO)提交的一项专利申请，在该申请中，DABUS是一种人工智能，被DABUS的发明者Stephen Thaler指定为发明者。申请书中指出，该公司以雇主的身份获得了专利权。另据指出，他作为DABUS的所有人，应被承认为所请求的专利的受让人。欧洲专利局拒绝了这一申请，理由是根据《欧洲专利公约》，发明者一词指的是真人，而人工智能机构不具有法人资格。由于认可机构没有可与自然人和法人相提并论的法人资格，他们既不能受雇，也不能转让权利。在这一点上，罗马法中奴隶的地位可以为AI发明人和自然人或法人申请人之间的专利申请权转让提供法律解决方案。这一解决方案的优势在于，与“不对人工智能产生的发明提供专利保护”和“授予人工智能法人资格”的方法相比，它提供了一种中间解决方案。这个项目的目标是通过给予人工智能特殊的法律地位来填补申请者和发明者之间的法律差距，这一地位受到罗马法的启发。

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.