News bits: Legalized discrimination spreads to judges; Can AI invent?; Etc.

The deep moral rot that underpins the the recent radical Christian nationalist Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative legalized discrimination against LGBQT people. That decision elevated religious freedom and rights above all other civil liberties, opening the floodgates for open discrimination against the LGBQT community is society and commerce. The rot is spreading to the legal system itself. Law & Crime writes:

Judge says SCOTUS ruling for Christian web designer means 

she doesn’t have to marry same-sex couples

The fallout from a Christian web-designer’s victory in the Supreme Court continued as a Texas judge attempted to use the ruling to deny marriage to gay couples.

Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco, Texas, refused to perform same-sex marriages in 2019 on the grounds that officiating the ceremonies would conflict with her sincerely-held religious belief as a Christian.

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A NYT article discusses an ongoing debate about whether AI (artificial intelligence) can invent new things. US patent law specifies that an inventor cannot get their idea from another natural person.[1] AI is not another natural person. At least, that is how I understood the law and what AI is. Based on that understanding, AI could invent something and the person who sees the invention can file a patent application that claims the invention. 

Apparently, (i) it's more complicated than that, and (ii) I am one of a small but growing number, of people who believe that AI a human can invent something. That belief is based directly on the language of the law. The NYT writes:

Generative artificial intelligence, the technology engine powering the popular ChatGPT chatbot, seems to have a limitless bag of tricks. It can produce on command everything from recipes and vacation plans to computer code and molecules for new drugs.

But can A.I. invent?

Legal scholars, patent authorities and even Congress have been pondering that question. The people who answer “yes,” a small but growing number, are fighting a decidedly uphill battle in challenging the deep-seated belief that only a human can invent.

But patent arbiters generally agree on one thing: An inventor has to be human, at least under current standards. 

The project has experienced mixed results so far with patent authorities around the world. South Africa granted it a patent for a heat-diffusing drink container that was generated by A.I., and most countries, including China, have not yet made a determination. In the United States, Australia and Taiwan, [AI-generated] patent claims have been turned down.

Germaine's reasoning

Since patent law does not specify how an inventor can make an invention, simply reading and understanding the output from AI content can constitute the act of invention. Reading AI output without understanding it falls short of the legal act of invention. The people who wrote the AI program could not know what outputs would result from the various inputs that different people feed into AI. Therefore, the inventors of the AI program, which might be copyrightable[2], could not be the inventors of AI output.

Important people's reasoning

But, Germaine is, as usual, a pesky outlier in his reasoning. Big corporations who can just smell thousands of new patents within their grasp make a different argument. One expert makes a purely economic argument. His argument is completely detached from the literal language of the applicable law. In short, important people argue that rejecting patent claims that an inventor got from AI “deprives an entire class of important and potentially lifesaving patentable inventions of any protections” and that “jeopardizes billions in current and future investments” by undermining the incentive that patent protection would provide. The federal appeals court that oversees all patent disputes rejected AI originated claims and the out of its depth[3] Supreme Court declined to hear the case.  

Footnotes: 

1. The law:

VII. AN INVENTOR OR JOINT INVENTOR MUST BE A NATURAL PERSON

35 U.S.C. 115 requires that a US patent application filed under 35 U.S.C. 111(a) shall include the name of the inventor or inventors. 35 U.S.C. 100(f) defines the term “inventor” as the individual or, if a joint invention, the individuals collectively who invented or discovered the subject matter of the invention. 35 U.S.C. 100(g) defines the terms “joint inventor” and “coinventor” as any one of the individuals who invented or discovered the subject matter of a joint invention. As provided in 37 CFR 1.41(b), an applicant may name the inventorship of a non-provisional application under 35 U.S.C. 111(a) in the Application Data Sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76, or in the inventor’s oath or declaration in accordance with 37 CFR 1.63. See MPEP § 602.01.

2. The situation appears to be similar for copyrights. Three basic requirements for copyright protection are (i) what is protected must be a work of authorship, (ii) it must be original, and (iii) it must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression, e.g., written down on paper, stored in fixed computer memory, recorded, etc. 

3. One reason I retired from practicing patent law was that the US Supreme Court was increasingly out of its depth. It was unable to grasp the basic fundamentals of patent law and the basics of the science involved in patent claims and technical inventions. The current situation where the Supreme Court has upheld rejecting AI-originated patent claims is simply wrong in my opinion. Apparently the court, in its arrogant ignorance, does not understand basic patent law. If the plaintiffs did not argue the inventorship issue, then that was malpractice, again in my opinion. 

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More radical right moral rot: The Hill writes:

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that an Indianapolis Catholic high school was allowed to fire its guidance counselor because she is in a same-sex marriage.

Shelly Fitzgerald was fired from Roncalli High School in Indianapolis in 2018 after working there for 14 years after the school discovered that she is married to a woman. Fitzgerald sued the school over her firing.

What is immensely galling about this is that Catholic high schools are tax exempt. That unjustifiable generosity is forced on all Americans. The schools not only pay little or no taxes, they openly discriminate against people that God hates. God hates a lot of people. God is cruel and uncaring about the suffering he causes to people he hates. Or, is it just a matter of God's servants going rogue and doing bad things against God's will? Or, should this be spun another way?