As artificial intelligence (AI) gets increasingly sophisticated, it is challenging established standards in many areas of intellectual property (IP) law as well as the law generally. Among other things, AI is now generating creative works in the absence of traditional human authors and inventions in the absence of traditional human inventors. This, in turn, raises fascinating and important questions of whether this sort of activity ought to be protected by intellectual property rights. It also raises important questions with respect to deep fakes, and ethical uses of AI, and protections for AI training data. In this keynote lecture, Professor Abbott will discuss his Artificial Inventor Project seeking patent protection for AI-generated inventions, and will definitively answer every question anyone could have about AI or the meaning of life.
Professor Ryan Abbott, MD, JD, MTOM, PhD is Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey School of Law and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is the author of The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press, and he has published widely on issues associated with law and technology, health law, and intellectual property in leading legal, medical, and scientific books and journals. Professor Abbott’s research has been featured prominently in the popular press, including in The Times, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and other media outlets based on time. He routinely gives keynote lectures and presents internationally in academic (e.g., MIT, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge), government (e.g., World Intellectual Property Organization, World Trade Organization, UK Intellectual Property Office), and industry (e.g., Google, IBM, Swiss Re) settings. Managing Intellectual Property magazine named him as one of the fifty most influential people in intellectual property in 2019 and again in 2021. Professor Abbott is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (MD), the Yale Law School (JD), University of Surrey School of Law (PhD), as well as a graduate from Emperor’s College (MTOM) and a graduate from University of California, Los Angeles (BS). More information about Professor Abbott can be found on his personal webpage: https://ryanabbott.com/about/.
