No rights, especially in context of IP where it is most likely
Bennett & Daly ’20 [Belinda Bennett, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology and Angela Daly, School of Law, Strathclyde University, “Recognising Rights for Robots: Can We? Will We? Should We?” LAW, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY v. 12 n. 1, 2020, p. 77-78]
If regulatory questions about robot rights arise before the courts in the context of litigation a coherentist approach is likely.129 Given that existing legal categories are likely to remain (largely) unchanged with a coherentist approach, recognition of robot rights is unlikely to emerge within coherentist legal analysis. For example, existing intellectual property laws are likely to be amended rather than new forms of intellectual property being articulated and recognised.130 In contrast, legislatures are likely to engage with regulatory questions about new technologies through a regulatory-instrumentalist lens131 which may contemplate whether existing legal categories are adequate for the risks and challenges (potentially) posed by new technologies and whether new categories or new regulatory frameworks are required to meet those challenges. In this environment, compared to a coherentist approach, a regulatory-instrumentalist approach is more likely to recognise (the potential for) robot rights provided such recognition would address regulatory goals, and thus debate over the potential for robots to be granted rights is more likely to arise within an instrumentalist-regulatory approach.