LU

In this post, Rachel Free (Partner), Toby Sears (Partner) and Omri Shirion (Associate) of the CMS Intellectual Property team, preview the UK Supreme Court’s upcoming hearing of Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. This case concerns the treatment under the Patents Act 1977 (the “1977 Act”) of inventions created by artificial intelligence (“AI”) machines in the absence of a human inventor.

The Appellant, Dr Stephen Thaler, previously appealed a decision of the UK Intellectual Property Office (“UKIPO”) that two UK patent applications should be deemed withdrawn because they named an AI machine, ‘DABUS,’ as the inventor.

In the latest effort by the Biden administration to promote consideration of climate and environmental justice impacts in federal decision-making, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recently issued interim guidance for federal agencies analyzing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and climate change under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).^[1] Under the new guidance, which is similar to previous guidance that had been withdrawn under the Trump administration, NEPA review documents will generally be expected to quantify GHG emissions caused by federal actions, discuss the resulting climate impacts, and incorporate environmental justice considerations. While the