'AI inventors: deference for legal personality without respect for innovation?' by Ernest Kenneth-Southworth and Yahong Li in (2023) 18(1) Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 58–69 comments
Thirty years ago, Lawrence B. Solum wrote a visionary article concerning the debate on the legal personhood of artificial intelligence (AI) and posed the following question:
Could an artificial intelligence become a legal person? As of today, this question is only theoretical.
Thirty years later, in the area of patent law, recent cases from the UK, the USA and Australia have resoundingly answered: ‘no’ to intellectual property rights (IPRs) for AI systems. While academic commentators have perhaps helped sensationalize the concept of an ‘AI inventor’, national patent offices and court judgments have taken a sober approach in opining that AI systems cannot possess or be subject to IPRs in patent law. This article argues that recent decisions, which have declined to grant IPRs to AI systems, are correct and pay deference to the requirement of legal personality, which is the foundation of law. Granting legal personhood to AI systems or machines, at least within the area of intellectual property, seems implausible. However, the article further argues that the deference given to legal personality in AI inventor cases raises the question of what impact this has on innovation. An approach that outcasts AI systems from patents may well respect the current order of legal personhood within the boundaries of most legal systems, but it may negatively impact the existing incentives for innovation provided by the IPR system. The article advocates for a reform of intellectual property laws to take into account the role of human creativity in enabling the creativity of AI systems
'Animal Rights in Colombia: A Critique from an Environmental Perspective' by Carlos Lozano in (2023) 54 Revista Derecho del Estado 345-380 comments
Animal Rights are commonly understood as an expression of the Rights of Nature. However, one and the other are in open contradiction, due to the complex interactions of ecosystems and the place of fauna in them, poorly understood by the generators of animal law rules, since animal suffering is inherent in nature. Animal Rights in Colombia are not an expression of the Rights of Nature; on the contrary, they undermine them, and hinder the consolidation of an Environmental Law aligned with social justice that places the survival of ecosystems at the center. This is because animal law illegalizes critical ecological processes, gentrifies Environmental Law, fosters an artificial binarism between fauna and flora, contradicts certain forms of climate action, hinders conservation, stigmatizes cultural diversity, discriminates by class, impedes the control of invasive species, generates a protection deficit for other kingdoms of life, such as plants and fungi, and promotes a transition from anthropocentrism to a kind of zoocentrism.
