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From: houpt@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Charles )
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Who owns the output of an AI?
Message-ID: <1778@svax.cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Tue, 10-Nov-87 13:08:54 EST
Article-I.D.: svax.1778
Posted: Tue Nov 10 13:08:54 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Nov-87 22:12:15 EST
Reply-To: houpt@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Charles (Chuck) Houpt)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 18


   I read an interesting news item in this weeks NewScientist magazine.
It said that the British parliment is reorganizing the UKs intellectual
property law. The interseting thing is that it has a section dealing with
intellectual property generated by Artificial Intelligences.

   The law says that the output of an AI is owned by the user running the
AI, NOT the programmer who designed it.

   Is this fare? Should copywrites go to the user or the programmer? (or to
the AI :-)? To me the British law seems unfair. If my AI program discovered
a new high temperature super-conductor, shouldn't I get some profit? The
user running my program may know nothing about super-conductors, why should
he get the patent?
   What do you think?

-Chuck Houpt  houpt@svax.cs.cornell.edu
              KY3Y@CORNELLA.BITNET