The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that an artificial intelligence system cannot be named as an inventor under the Patent Act because the statute limits inventors to natural persons.
Stephen Thaler sued United States Patent and Trademark Office and its director after the PTO rejected his patent applications that listed his AI system, DABUS, as the sole inventor, arguing that the agency wrongly refused to accept applications without a human inventor.
Plaintiff asked the court to reverse the PTO’s decision, reinstate the patent applications, and conclude that an AI software system may qualify as an inventor under the Patent Act.
Federal Circuit’s ruling
The court ruled that the PTO properly denied the applications and that the district court correctly granted summary judgment to defendants because only a natural person may be an inventor under federal patent law.
An individual has to be a person
The court ruled this way because the Patent Act defines an inventor as an “individual,” and the statute’s text, surrounding provisions, and prior precedent all show that “individual” means a human being, not a machine or software system. The court also rejected plaintiff’s policy and constitutional arguments because the statutory language was unambiguous.
Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F.4th 1207 (Fed. Cir., August 5, 2022)