Josh Taylor
The full bench of the federal court has overturned a lower court ruling that artificial intelligence systems can be considered “inventors” under Australian patent law.
The July 2021 ruling had found Dr Stephen Thaler’s Dabus system could be considered the inventor of an emergency warning light and a type of food container, after the Commissioner of Patents had previously rejected the patent application.
The full federal court, however, found naming Dabus as the inventor did not comply with existing patent law, in a ruling earlier this month.
However, the court left open the door to whether AI could, in future, be considered inventors:
In filing the application, Dr Thaler no doubt intended to provoke debate as to the role that artificial intelligence may take within the scheme of the Patents Act and Regulations. Such debate is important and worthwhile. However, in the present case it clouded consideration of the prosaic question before the primary judge…In our view, there are many propositions that arise for consideration in the context of artificial intelligence and inventions.
The court said that includes whether a person who is an inventor should be redefined to include artificial intelligence, and how that would be defined in working with the person who invented the AI system.
The court said that would “require more consideration” but indicated that it would lean more into being a policy and legislation decision – that is something parliament would have to consider – and then up to the courts to interpret.
Ben Doherty
Members of Australia’s Afghan Hazara diaspora will hold a candlelight vigil Friday night in Sydney to commemorate the victims of the high school terrorist attacks in Afghanistan this week.
On Tuesday, 19 April, the Abdul Rahim Shahid High School and Mumtaz Educational Centre in western Kabul, were hit by co-ordinated bombing attacks which are believed to have killed dozens and injuring more than 100. Accurate figures are difficult to ascertain: witnesses reported Taliban authorities kept them from reaching the wounded victims or prevented them from being taken to hospitals.
The schools were in Dasht-e-Barchi, a predominantly Hazara ethnic neighbourhood in the west of the capital.
Friends in Sydney please join us tomorrow for a candlelight vigil to commemorate and mourn the recent cowardly attack on Hazara school students in Kabul by the T.ban pic.twitter.com/v1rc5LAnws
— Zaki Haidari (@ZakiHaidariAU) April 21, 2022
“Abdul Rahim Shahid High School was the largest high school in the country – it housed 30,000 students and over 400 teachers in three daily shifts. It was also one of the most successful high schools because its graduates passed the university entry examinations with very high success rates,” Zaki Haidari of the Saba Group said.
“The impact of this horrible incident has been immense on the Hazara community in
Australia, including the prominent Hazara communities living in the Cumberland Council area as well as across Sydney, whose families and close relatives reside in the same area of Kabul where the continuous attacks on the Hazaras have been taking place.
“Through this event we hope to raise awareness about the injustice and severity of Hazara genocide in Afghanistan and demand that the Australian and international community take accountability for this outrageous human rights violation.”
The candlelight vigil begins at 6pm at Granville Town Hall, 10 Carlton St, Granville in Sydney.
That’s where the press conference ends.
Q: The latests polling is showing that Scott Morrison is unpopular and Anthony Albanese is equally unpopular. You came in today and have been comfortable – are you the leader people have been looking for?
Jason Clare:
A few laughs in the room there … Albanese is the leader this country needs … The answer is clear, and I think Australians will see that of the course of the last four weeks of the campaign … it is time to give him a go.
They have a choice here, between honest Albo and smirking Scott. Australians will make that choice very clear. Australians will vote for hope, change, a better future. It Scott Morrison is saying that it is as good as it gets, [that’s] so out of touch.
It is time to get out of the Lodge and into the real world.
We have real plans here, the can build a real future and relieve the childcare pressures of mums and dads who want to work more. We can fix that.
Australian who cannot find a doctor in the bush and cannot afford one in the city. We can fix that. There are too many young people, let alone older people, who cannot afford to buy a home. We need to make it easier for them. If the Liberal party doesn’t think this is true, there are lots of Australians that have had enough of the rorts, enough of the lies, and they want a government they will do something about it. That is what we will do if we are honoured to be elected on May 21.
Q: Back to the testing regime and so on required to the diagnosis. [Was] Anthony Albanese doing daily testing?
Jason Clare:
… He was doing daily rats.
Q: Did you take extra precautions now to make sure that those senior members of the shadow cabinet that haven’t got Covid are protected.
Clare:
I think it’ll be the same with the Liberals – make every practical precaution you can, wear a mask when appropriate All practical precautions. But let’s not … think that you can stop Covid from coming to you; 40- or 50,000 Australians are getting it.
We have another advantage in this campaign, because we [have a strong team] here and we will showcase that over the next few days.
Q: Twenty-five per cent of people in the crowd remain undecided about either leader. Doesn’t that show that Anthony Albanese cannot afford to lose any time away from the public view?
Jason Clare:
I think of what it shows is that the election will be tight. It will go down to the wire, every vote will count. We have to fight for every vote, convince people that we have the plan to build a better country, strengthen the economy, make Australia a fairer, better place. And we can do that, we are not a one-man band. We are a strong united team and we can show that over the course of the next few days.
Q: Obviously Anthony Albanese spent some time in Brisbane and was preparing for the debate. Members of the Labor inner sanctum, are they close contacts?
Clare:
To the best of my knowledge they are not classified as close contacts. Nor do I think anybody in this room is, is that right? They’re doing the normal things that you have been doing, the daily tests to make sure that they are monitoring the systems and checking themselves to make sure they are OK.
Q: Australians are going to see a lot more of Scott Morrison on the stump in marginal seats. Making announcements over the next seven days, and very little of Anthony Albanese outside of isolation when he’s well. Does the Labor campaign consider that a positive or a negative?
Jason Clare:
It’s just the reality. It’s the reality. You get COVID you’re in iso. There’s no alternative to that. We planned for this for months. It’s inevitable that people will get COVID if they’re out and about. I see this an opportunity, I got to say. Not only do we have a better plan, we have a better team.
Q: Australians seeing more of the Prime Minister. Is that a positive or a negative for your campaign?
Clare:
Well, I think it’s a positive for our campaign. The more they see of Scott Morrison, the more they will realise this government has run out of puff. Let me take you back, Mark, to the debate again. Think about the questions that were asked at that debate. Right off the bat, the first question was about housing affordability. People were saying, we’re finding it harder for our kids to be able to buy a home. Next question was about aged care.
People terrified about putting their parents into aged care. Then there was a question about the NDIS. People worried about the cuts to funding for their autistic child. And then there was a question about corruption. It shows people care about corruption. Scott Morrison didn’t have any answers to any of that. Just excuses. Albo had real practical plans to help all of those people. What those people were saying at that debate wasn’t gotcha. It was help me. And Labor’s got plans to help them.
Scott Morrison didn’t have anything there other than excuses. That’s why I said yesterday voting for this government again, after they’ve been in power now for almost a decade – would be like staying in a taxi that’s run out of petrol. It won’t take you where you need to go. They have run out ideas, run out of things they want to do. It’s all short-term fixes, no long-term plans.
I think Australians looking at this government, and they’ll look harder at Scott Morrison over the course of the next weeks and the weeks after that, will say to themselves, this government doesn’t deserve to be rewarded with your vote. And after all of the fighting that’s going on, inside the Liberal Party, fighting amongst themselves, attacking the Prime Minister, this government needs time in opposition to fix themselves.
Q: Are you trying to get Australians to elect Anthony Albanese as opposed to kick out Scott Morrison?
Jason Clare:
Well, we’re saying two things: one, this government doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. They don’t deserve to be rewarded with your vote after all of the failures of the last decade. As Albo said the other day, Australia is the best country in the world, but we deserve a better government. Australians don’t kick out governments lightly or often, but they kick them out when they are failing them, when they’re incompetent – instead of focusing on you, they’re just fighting among themselves. I’ve got to tell you, this government is the trifecta. It ticks all three of those boxes.
Q: One of the arguments is when it comes to Labor’s attack over what happens in the Solomon Islands – Mr Albanese said that Labor would engage better in the region. There’s no substantive policy about what you would do differently. What would Labor do? Do we need better fuel reserves, do we need increased funding to the region? Was would you do differently, other than saying you wouldn’t have this problem?
Clare:
We’ll talk more about that during the campaign. I hear your question.
Q: It’s the big issue.
Clare:
And where does it start? Picking up the phone. Talking to people. You know, the prime minister makes a lot about his relationships with the Pacific. And talks a step-up. As Albo said the other night, it’s a stuff-up. That starts with engagement. It’s people to people, talking to people. It’s on the phone and also face to face. That’s where this government stuffed this up. Everyone has said the foreign minister should’ve been there. We’ve got Marise Payne even refusing to have a debate about Penny Wong. She won’t debate Penny Wong in Australia and she won’t go to the Solomon Islands.
If you’re serious about Australia’s national security … [and] you want to engage, get on a plane. What happened instead? The foreign minister went to a business function and some bloke called Zed got sent there.
Q: There’s a situation where you could have the smartest economic mind in the Labor caucus seeing fundamental flaws in this policy, the NDIS. How is that not problematic? And secondly, just on the implications of Mr Albanese having Covid, one of the challenges he faces in and you face is he’s largely unknown with voters. We see that in poll after poll. How damaging is it, therefore, he’s going to spend the next week in his home in Sydney and unable to crisscross the country interacting with voters?
Jason Clare:
I think real problem is the Australians know Scott Morrison too well. They know he abandoned them during the bushfires. He failed them by not buying enough vaccines when we were stuck at home, when half the country was stuck at home. They know he failed them during the floods when people were stuck on their own roofs waiting for helicopters. They know this government has deliberately kept their wages low for a decade. They know this government has rorted taxpayers money for their own benefit. They know that Scott Morrison’s own party call him a liar. And know this government has no real plans for the future other than trying to drag themselves across the line on May 21. That is Scott Morrison’s problem.
Q: Can I ask about Andrew Charlton, the Labor candidate in Parramatta, his comments about the national disability insurance scheme. Anthony Albanese said it was a great Labor reform. He wrote in an … op-ed. This is the quote: “This is becoming most of the serious design flaws.” He’s been recruited for his economic expertise.
Jason Clare:
This is a great Labor legacy. I agree with him on many things, but not this. I think more problematic is the things he’s done to the NDIS. Let’s be real about this. There’s two types of people on the NDIS at the moment, there’s people who had their funding cut and there’s people who are terrified about getting their funding cut.
Just give you one example: his name is Jacob. He lives in my electorate. He’s a teenager now. He has autism and he’s looked after by his dad. His mum is not there because she died of a brain tumour. His dad has been to my office three times because the funding has been cut three times.
Every time we’ve had to go back in and try to get more funding for him. The last time all his dad wanted was a carer so he can get respite on the weekend. You can’t understand how hard it is for Jacob’s dad until you spend time in his house.
Let me give you one more – this is important, you raised it. I met Stella at Bankstown hospital about four or five years ago. Stella was in the hospital for three years. Why? Because the NDIS hadn’t got around to putting the changes into her house so she could get out. That’s the reality. That’s the real world.
That’s what is happening here and there’s thousands of stories like that. The NDIS – your question in essence is about can you make it better? You bet we can.
Q: It’s about the design and the problem of sustainability, given the huge trajectory of the cost. No one is saying it’s not important. It’s so important.
Clare:
My answer so to you is the NDIS is a great Labor legacy. But we need to continue to make it better. Have a look at what Bill [Shorten] said the other day, talking about the sort of fundamental reforms needed to it. One of them is more staff. One of the problems Jacob’s dad has is getting to even talk to anyone.
