Artificial intelligence: English Court of Appeal decides artificial neural network is not patentable
The English Court of Appeal has decided that an artificial neural network (ANN) was not patentable in Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks v Emotional Perception AI Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 825, reversing the finding of the lower court (the High Court), and in so doing agreeing with the UK Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) original rejection of the patent application on the basis of unpatentable subject matter. The decision has ramifications for how patent claims for ANNs (and perhaps AI more generally) are made going forward, clarifying that training of an AI system that helps create the AI system itself, and non-technical outputs it produces, are not relevant in establishing patentability in relation to an AI computer program.