• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Core Principles of Responsible AI
    • Accountability
    • Fairness
    • Privacy
    • Safety and Security
    • Sustainability
    • Transparency
  • Special Topics
    • AI in Industry
    • Ethical Implications
    • Human-Centered Design
    • Regulatory Landscape
    • Technical Methods
  • Living Dictionary
  • State of AI Ethics
  • AI Ethics Brief
  • 🇫🇷
Montreal AI Ethics Institute

Montreal AI Ethics Institute

Democratizing AI ethics literacy

Submission to World Intellectual Property Organization on IP & AI

August 6, 2020

Full paper in PDF formDownload

Based on insights from the Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI) staff and supplemented by workshop contributions from the AI Ethics community convened by MAIEI on July 5, 2020.

Intro

This document posits that, at best, a tenuous case can be made for providing AI exclusive IP over their “inventions”. Furthermore, IP protections for AI are unlikely to confer the benefit of  ensuring regulatory compliance. Rather, IP protections for AI “inventors” present a host of negative externalities and obscures the fact that the genuine inventor, deserving of IP, is the human agent. This document will conclude by recommending strategies for WIPO to bring IP law into the 21st century, enabling it to productively account for AI “inventions”.

Full paper in PDF formDownload
Want quick summaries of the latest research & reporting in AI ethics delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the AI Ethics Brief. We publish bi-weekly.

Primary Sidebar

🔍 SEARCH

Spotlight

AI Policy Corner: U.S. Copyright Guidance on Works Created with AI

AI Policy Corner: AI for Good Summit 2025

AI Policy Corner: Japan’s AI Promotion Act

AI Policy Corner: Texas and New York: Comparing U.S. State-Level AI Laws

What is Sovereign Artificial Intelligence?

related posts

  • AI Consent Futures: A Case Study on Voice Data Collection with Clinicians

    AI Consent Futures: A Case Study on Voice Data Collection with Clinicians

  • Conformity Assessments and Post-market Monitoring: A Guide to the Role of Auditing in the Proposed E...

    Conformity Assessments and Post-market Monitoring: A Guide to the Role of Auditing in the Proposed E...

  • Episodio 3 - Idoia Salazar: Sobre la Vital Importancia de Educar al Ciudadano en los Usos Responsabl...

    Episodio 3 - Idoia Salazar: Sobre la Vital Importancia de Educar al Ciudadano en los Usos Responsabl...

  • Seeing Like a Toolkit: How Toolkits Envision the Work of AI Ethics

    Seeing Like a Toolkit: How Toolkits Envision the Work of AI Ethics

  • Longitudinal Fairness with Censorship

    Longitudinal Fairness with Censorship

  • Research summary: A Focus on Neural Machine Translation for African Languages

    Research summary: A Focus on Neural Machine Translation for African Languages

  • Research summary: Social Work Thinking for UX and AI Design

    Research summary: Social Work Thinking for UX and AI Design

  • AI Art and Misinformation: Approaches and Strategies for Media Literacy and Fact-Checking

    AI Art and Misinformation: Approaches and Strategies for Media Literacy and Fact-Checking

  • Supporting Human-LLM collaboration in Auditing LLMs with LLMs

    Supporting Human-LLM collaboration in Auditing LLMs with LLMs

  • Fairness Uncertainty Quantification: How certain are you that the model is fair?

    Fairness Uncertainty Quantification: How certain are you that the model is fair?

Partners

  •  
    U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC) at NIST

  • Partnership on AI

  • The LF AI & Data Foundation

  • The AI Alliance

Footer

Categories


• Blog
• Research Summaries
• Columns
• Core Principles of Responsible AI
• Special Topics

Signature Content


• The State Of AI Ethics

• The Living Dictionary

• The AI Ethics Brief

Learn More


• About

• Open Access Policy

• Contributions Policy

• Editorial Stance on AI Tools

• Press

• Donate

• Contact

The AI Ethics Brief (bi-weekly newsletter)

About Us


Founded in 2018, the Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI) is an international non-profit organization equipping citizens concerned about artificial intelligence and its impact on society to take action.


Archive

  • © 2025 MONTREAL AI ETHICS INSTITUTE.
  • This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
  • Learn more about our open access policy here.
  • Creative Commons License

    Save hours of work and stay on top of Responsible AI research and reporting with our bi-weekly email newsletter.