Last week saw the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) organise its second ‘Conversation on Intellectual Property (IP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)’. This focussed on key issues concerning the relationship between AI and IP identified in the first WIPO Conversation which took place last September. The subject matter of the Second Conversation was split into three sessions: ‘IP Protection for AI-Generated and AI-Assisted Works and Inventions’; ‘AI Inventions: Patentability, Disclosures and Guidelines’ and ‘Data: Copyright in Training Data and Further Rights in Data.’

Dr Daniela Simone contributed to Session 1 where other interventions were made predominantly on behalf of national IP offices, associations representing IP professionals or IP rights-holders, including AI-giants – IBM and Google. Her intervention related to copyright authorship and ownership (Issue 7, Question 6) in the context of AI-assisted works.

Dr Daniela Simone takes part in WIPO panel

Dr Simone emphasised the urgent need for more comparative study, given the lack of consensus on what the act of ‘authorship’ entails. While this issue pre-dates AI, the rapid developments in this area are making it increasingly urgent. She advised the audience that ‘the problem of AI-assisted work brings divergent approaches to the basic authorship standard into sharp relief… WIPO has an important role to play in facilitating international dialogue on these [existing] sticking points. Greater clarity on copyright in AI-assisted work is important, because it is a necessary pre-condition for an informed debate on AI-generated work. However, it also has a broader significance for human authors as complex creative processes proliferate in the digital age.’ These are all themes which Dr Simone explored in her recent monograph, Copyright and Collective Authorship: Locating the Authors of Collaborative Work.

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