Increasingly, companies are using artificial intelligence to invent new methods and products. But can a named inventor be a non-human machine under the law? That depends on which country's laws are being applied. The question of whether a country's Patent Act requires an "inventor" to be a human being is a question of statutory construction. For example, in the U.S. the statute requires an application for patent be made "by the inventor…in writing to the Director."1

Should an artificially intelligent machine be able to patent its own inventions? For a US federal judge, the larger implications of that question were irrelevant. In April 2020, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled that only "natural persons" could be credited as the inventor of a patent, and a US court decided Thursday that yes, that's what the law technically says (via Bloomberg). Not every country agrees with that direction. South Africa and Australia decided to go the other direction, granting one patent and reinstating a second patent application filed by AI researcher Steven Thaler, whose AI system DABUS reportedly came up with a flashing light and a new type of food container.