The concept of inventorship continues to evolve with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). AI-generated inventions spur disagreement among Patent Offices across the world as to who, or what, qualifies as an inventor in patent applications. The quandary is whether an AI platform that assists in creating an invention should be named as an inventor in a patent. For example, an AI-powered system may be employed pharmaceutically to identify molecular compounds in the discovery of a newly invented drug, without much human involvement. Does such AI assistance rise to the level of inventorship? The answer is nonot in the United Statesaccording to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. See Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F.4th 1207, 1213 (Fed. Cir. 2022).

In a hallmark decision, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently established that artificial intelligence cannot be named as an inventor on a U.S. patent. In Thaler v. Vidal, Dr. Stephen Thaler represented that he developed an AI platform named DABUS (device for the autonomous bootstrapping ofunified sentience) that created inventions. Thaler subsequently filed two patent applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for inventions generated by DABUS, attempting to list the DABUS-AI system as the inventor. The USPTO declined Thalers request. The circuit court affirmed, holding that only a human being can be an inventor in the United States. See Thaler, 43 F.4th at 1209, 1213.

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