Copyright
SCOTUS Edition: No One Can Own the Law - States Cannot Copyright Annotated laws
The Supreme Court of the United States has held in a split 5-4 decision in Georgia v Public.Resource.Org that government authorities cannot copyright annotations that summarize, but are not part of, a state’s body of enforceable statues due to the “government edicts doctrine,” a long recognized doctrine preventing the copyright protection of judicial opinions and statutes.
In Georgia v Public.Resource.Org, the State of Georgia hired Matthew Bender &Co., a division of the LexisNexis Group, under a work-for-hire agreement to draft annotations for the State’s official code, the “Official Code of Georgia Annotated” (OCGA). The agreement also contained a provision that granted all copyrights stemming from the work in the State of Georgia. Public.Resource.Org (PRO), a nonprofit dedicated to facilitating public access to government records and legal materials, posted the OCGA online and distributed copies to various organizations and Georgia officials. Georgia, in turn, sent several cease and desist letters before ultimately suing PRO for infringing on its copyright in the OCGA’s annotations.
PRO counterclaimed by seeking a declaratory judgment that the entire OCGA, including the annotations, fell in the public domain. The District Court sided with the Commission, holding that the annotations were eligible for copyright protection because they had not been enacted into law. The Eleventh Circuit, however, reversed the District Court's opinion due to the government edicts doctrine. This week, SCOTUS confirmed the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling and affirmed that the government edicts doctrine applies to annotations as well.
Specifically, the main principle behind the government edicts doctrine is that no one can own the law. In terms of copyright, this doctrine dictates that judges or other legislative parties cannot be “authors” of “whatever work they perform in their capacity” as lawmakers. In Georgia’s case, because the Georgia’s state Commission retained a private company to prepare annotations, “[t]he Copyright Act . . . deems the Commission the sole ‘author’ of the work.” Thus, because the Commission “functions as an arm of [the Georgia Legislature],” the Commission is “wield[ing] the legislature’s authority when it works with Lexis to produce the annotations.” Or in other words, the State of Georgia is the author of the annotations and therefore cannot copyright the work as they cannot own it.
The dissent, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Justice Samuel Alito and in large part by Justice Stephen Breyer) and by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (joined by Breyer) would have permitted Georgia to copyright these materials and retain the exclusive right to authorize their sale. Specifically, the dissenting opinion points to the fact that annotations are not law itself, which mean that the annotations do not represent the will of the people and does not impede “fair notice of the laws.” Additionally, not allowing works such as annotations to be copyrighted, disincentives States and other legislative parties from hiring companies to produce such works as their production cannot be copyrighted and thus cannot be used to produce profits.
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Patent
Artificial Intelligence Are Just Machines, Not Inventors
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled on Monday that artificial intelligence (AI) machines cannot be listed as inventors on patent applications as they are not natural persons ( i.e., humans) as required under U.S. Patent Law. The decision came in response to two patents application filed on behalf of an AI System called Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS).
DABUS, which was created by Missouri physicist Stephen Thaler, is in simple terms is a creativity machine that consists of artificial neural networks designed to identify potential ideas and/or solutions to problems that are sufficiently novel in nature when compared to the machine's pre-existing knowledge base. DABUS can generate these ideas without human intervention. These ideas eventually lead to the two patents applications that were at issue at in this case, an application for a new food container and the other for a new flashlight. DABUS was listed as the inventor on the applications, while Thaler was listed as the patent holder.
These applications were submitted last year by the Artificial Inventor Project’s team of international patent attorneys, led by Ryan Abbott. Abbott filed these applications not only with the USPTO, but with the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) as well. The Artificial Inventor Project argues that listing an AI as the inventor “might be necessary when hundreds or even thousands of employees have contributed code to a system, like IBM’s Watson supercomputer, before the computer itself then goes on to solve a problem. If no human was involved closely enough with an invention to claim credit for it, then the group fears it may be impossible to patent it at all,” according to The Verge.
The IPO and EPO have already ruled, however, that DABUS cannot be listed as an inventor based on the legal interpretations of who can be considered an “inventor” under their respective jurisdictions’ patent laws.
The USPTO has similarly stated that Federal Code of Regulations refers to an inventor as a "person" and the Manuel of Patent Examining Procedure uses terms that indicate the "conception" of an invention must be performed by a person, and not an AI inventor. The USPTO went on further to state that the various policy issues Thaler raised concerning bigger picture questions of AI inventors do not overcome the "plain language" of the patent laws passed by Congress.
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Nikola vs Tesla $2 Billion Lawsuit Continues
The USPTO has declined Tesla’s inter partes request to invalidate Nikola’s patent 10,077,084 (‘084), an effort Tesla employed to quickly end a $2 billion patent infringement lawsuit against it.
Nikola, a Phoenix Arizona startup truck company that uses hydrogen fuel cells and batteries to power its vehicles, had filed a lawsuit against Tesla Motors in May 2018 claiming that the Tesla Semi, which had debuted in November 2017, was too similar to Nikola’s One Truck that had debuted in December 2016 and infringed upon multiple design patents, such as the "wrap windshield, mid-entry door, fuselage, fender, side cladding, and the overall design of a semi." Nikola had obtained patents on these design elements from the USPTO between February and April 2018.
In September 2019, Tesla asked the USPTO to review Nikola's mid-entry side door patent, seeking to overturn it. The USPTO, however, has declined Tesla's review request stating "that Petitioner has not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success in proving that at least one claim of the '084 patent is unpatentable." The "084" applies to patent 10,077,084, for "Systems, Methods, and Devices for an Automobile Door or Window."
Telsa has also asked the court for a change in venue from Nikola's Arizona base to Tesla's Northern California base and to dismiss the case. The court has agreed to move the venue but has not dismissed the case.
A Nikola Motor spokesperson told ArsTechina, "The lawsuit speaks for itself. We are simply protecting our intellectual property." A Tesla spokesperson told ArsTechina, "It's patently obvious there is no merit to this lawsuit."
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