Rage against the Machine: Inventors Must Be Human

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that an artificial intelligence (AI) software system cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent application because the Patent Act requires an "inventor" to be a natural person. Stephen Thaler develops and runs AI systems that generate patentable inventions, including a system that he calls his "Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Science" (DABUS). In 2019, Thaler sought patent protection for two of DABUS's putative inventions by filing patent applications with the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). Thaler listed DABUS as the sole inventor on both applications. The PTO found that the patent applications lacked valid inventorship and sent a Notice of Missing Parts requesting that Thaler identify a valid inventor.