Dr Christian E Mammen (1993, DPhil Law)

Dr Christian E Mammen (1993, DPhil Law) is the lead author of a new white paper titled “Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, and the Requirement of Human Authors and Inventors in Copyright and Patent Law” published in July.

Dr Mammen is an American Friends of University College Oxford (AFUCO) board member and serves as a Managing Partner of Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP’s San Francisco office, where he is the Co-Founder of the firm’s Artificial Intelligence Practice.

The Oxford University Law Faculty invited Dr Mammen during his sabbatical from Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP to spend a term as an Academic Visitor at the university. During Trinity term, he accumulated a group of professors and postgraduates to investigate the need for human authorship as required by IP laws, alongside questions about AI and the creative process. The paper was co-authored by Michael Collyer, Dr. Ron Dolin, Dr. Dev Gangjee, Dr. Tom Melham, Maggie Mustaklem, Dr. Vincent Wang-Maścianica and Pireeni Sundaralingam (1986, Experimental Psychology), Univ’s Poet Laureate. They substantially participated in the working group, contributed to the drafting of the white paper, and have approved the final draft. In addition to the listed co-authors, Bryce Goodman and Linda Eggert participated in one or more meetings of the working group.

The paper investigates AI’s growing role in creative works and how creativity’s definition may affect the way intellectual property (IP) laws are applied to products of AI. The authors explore generative AI and whether current IP laws – requiring human authorship – are adequate in the current global technology surge. They also debate whether generative AI stifles or strengthens human’s creative efforts and discuss the need for the definition of creativity in IP laws to evolve together with the age of AI. The study incorporates multidisciplinary perspectives from neuroscience, philosophy and law to provide a thorough analysis of the discussion. 

You can read more about Dr Mammen here.

Published: 15 August 2024

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