British Airways has made this announcement:
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British Airways customers can now check the travel restrictions and entry requirements of any destination the airline...
Posted on Jul 21, 2021 Danni Rush, Chief Operating Officer of Virgin Incentives and Virgin Experience Days Employee engagement is a constant challenge...
Brisbane Airport’s CEO has said international airlines “may well leave Australia behind” as vaccinated nations begin to remove COVID restrictions now.
“As an island...
Regular readers will know my position on this issue – I do not consider it appropriate at this time (or, potentially, ever) to grant patents for inventions devised entirely by automated means, such that there is no human inventor. I have written an article targeted to a more general audience, which has been published by InnovationAus, providing an overview of the Australian case, and broadly discussing my concerns. Here I will be going into more detail of the arguments presented at the recent hearing, and why I think it would be very unfortunate if Justice Beach were to decide that this is a suitable case for judicial development of the law to embrace machine inventors, as he is being encouraged to do by Thaler.
I was able to attend the hearing virtually, since it was being held via web conference. Thaler’s team, led by experienced and highly-regarded barrister David Shavin QC, appeared in person in the Melbourne courtroom with Justice Beach, while the Commissioner of Patents was represented by Hamish Bevan, appearing via video from Sydney (subject to restrictions, due to an ongoing COVID outbreak). Although I disagree with the proposition, I thought that Mr Shavin presented a persuasive argument that the relevant provisions of the Australian Patents Act 1990 can, and should, be interpreted to encompass non-human inventors, and that Mr Bevan perhaps did not do enough to counter this argument. I formed the impression that Justice Beach just might be minded to ‘develop’ the Australian law to permit patent applications having no human inventor, in part because he was not presented with any particularly good reasons not to do so.