Federal Circuit Agrees with the USPTO on Inventors: Only Human, after All

The Federal Circuit made headlines when it affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia’s holding that an artificial intelligence (AI) cannot qualify as an “inventor” under the Patent Act – only (human) “individuals” can. The patent application at the heart of the case listed a single inventor with the given name “DABUS” and the family name “(Invention generated by artificial intelligence).” The district court had granted the motion for summary judgment of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) after the applicant and assignee of the patent application, Stephen Thaler, challenged the USPTO’s denial of his petition and requested reconsideration of the Office’s dismissal of his patent application for failure to identify each inventor by his or her legal name. While the Federal Circuit opinion is important, we anticipate the real-life upshot of its holding will be minimal. As the court said, “we are not confronted today with the question of whether inventions made by human beings with the assistance of AI are eligible for patent protection,” and yet that is the question that is most relevant today. (Thaler v. Vidal, 2021-2347, 2022 WL 3130863 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 5, 2022) at 10.)

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