Legal precedents surrounding AI and patent and copyright infringement laws remain unclear, which Brown Neri Smith & Khan, LLP Partner Ryan Abbott discusses with Yahoo Finance Live. He notes core questions of whether businesses can patent AI-generated work lacking "traditional human inventors" and if original materials generated by AI can be legally copyrighted.
The issues tie into the New York Times (NYT) lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT) for using its published content to train AI without permission. Abbott explains this case aims to determine if such training constitutes "copyright infringement" or if fair use provisions apply that legally allow it.
Overall, he says current intellectual property frameworks struggle with "machines behaving like people" creating original materials. Standards rely on human creators whereas AI autonomously produces work based on training from other individuals' prior content, creating the dilemma at hand.
"When an AI gets involved, it gets potentially a little bit trickier," Abbott tells Yahoo Finance, adding "You're asking... who is the inventor? Because we need an inventor to have someone own a patent. The right goes to the inventor and then it goes to who they've assigned the invention to or who is entitled to it."
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