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AI and Patent Inventorship: The DABUS Cases
No, an AI system cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent.
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Översikt
Courts and patent offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Patent Office, Germany and Australia have all ruled that an inventor must be a natural person, rejecting Stephen Thaler's applications that named his AI system DABUS. Inventions made with AI can still be patented when a human makes a significant contribution, which matters to every company that uses AI in research and development.
Djupdykning
DABUS, short for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, is an AI system built by the American computer scientist Stephen Thaler. In 2018 and 2019 Thaler filed patent applications in many countries for two inventions he said DABUS came up with on its own: a food container with a fractal-shaped surface, and a flashing light designed to attract attention in emergencies. He named DABUS as the sole inventor and himself as the owner. He meant these filings as test cases. The results were almost all the same. The European Patent Office refused the applications, and in 2021 its Legal Board of Appeal confirmed that an inventor under the European Patent Convention must be a human being. In the US, the Federal Circuit held in Thaler v. Vidal (2022) that the Patent Act's word "individuals" means natural persons, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2023. In December 2023 the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an inventor under the Patents Act 1977 must be a natural person. In Australia a single judge accepted DABUS as an inventor in 2021, but the Full Federal Court reversed that decision in 2022. Germany's Federal Court of Justice (2024) also rejected an AI inventor, while indicating that a human could be named even where AI was used. South Africa granted a patent in 2021, but it carries little weight because South Africa does not examine the substance of patent applications. Many people assume these rulings make inventions produced with AI help unpatentable. They do not. The courts decided who can be named as an inventor, not whether using AI disqualifies an invention. What matters now is whether a human contributed enough to count as an inventor. A second misconception is that DABUS lost because the inventions were weak. The cases turned almost entirely on the legal wording that defines who an inventor is.
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The Future of AI and Patent Inventorship: The DABUS Cases
In the major jurisdictions the rule that inventors must be human now looks settled. Further change is more likely to come from legislatures and patent offices than from new court cases. Several questions remain open. How much human input is enough as AI systems take on more of the design work? Will widespread AI use change the "person skilled in the art" standard used to judge whether an invention is obvious? Will some inventions made with little human input fall outside patent protection and be kept as trade secrets instead? Some commentators have proposed a new type of protection for AI-generated inventions, but no major jurisdiction has adopted one. Patent office guidance is likely to keep changing as examiners see more AI-assisted applications.
Verklig implementering
A pharmaceutical team uses a generative model to propose thousands of candidate molecules. A chemist then picks one and changes it based on her own hypothesis about how it binds. Her contribution can support her being named as inventor, but naming the model would get the application rejected.
An engineer types "design a better bicycle brake" into an AI tool and files whatever comes back. He risks having no qualifying human inventor, because simply presenting a general problem is unlikely to count as a significant contribution.
A patent attorney preparing inventor declarations for an AI-heavy project records who wrote the specific prompts, who judged and refined the outputs, and who built and tested the working prototype.
A startup filing in the UK and at the European Patent Office names its lead researcher, not its AI platform, as inventor. The UK Supreme Court's 2023 ruling and the EPO's decisions made clear that an AI cannot be designated.
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Vanliga frågor
What is AI and Patent Inventorship: The DABUS Cases?
No, an AI system cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent. Courts and patent offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Patent Office, Germany and Australia have all ruled that an inventor must be a natural person, rejecting Stephen Thaler's applications that named his AI system DABUS. Inventions made with AI can still be patented when a human makes a significant contribution, which matters to every company that uses AI in research and development.
Which two inventions did Stephen Thaler say DABUS created on its own?
Thaler's applications covered a fractal-shaped food container and a flashing light for attracting attention in emergencies. The inventions themselves were modest. The cases were about who could be named as inventor.
What did the US Federal Circuit decide in Thaler v. Vidal (2022)?
The court read the statutory word "individuals" as meaning human beings, so an AI cannot be an inventor. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision in 2023.
What did the UK Supreme Court rule in December 2023?
The UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Patents Act 1977 requires the inventor to be a natural person, which matches the outcomes in the US and at the EPO.
Why does South Africa's 2021 DABUS patent carry little legal weight?
Because South Africa grants patents without examining their substance, the grant was not a considered decision that AI can be an inventor.
How did the DABUS litigation go in Australia?
Australia briefly looked like an exception after a first-instance judge accepted DABUS. The Full Federal Court overturned that decision in 2022.
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