Overview
A group called the Artificial Inventor Project (AIP) launched a global effort to get an AI system listed as an inventor of a patent. See https://artificialinventor.com. To that end, the AIP filed patent applications on two inventions created by an AI system called “DABUS” in seventeen countries listing DABUS as the sole inventor.
The USPTO refused the applications and the federal District Court for the District of Virginia agreed, ruling that an AI system cannot be named as an inventor on a patent on grounds that an inventor must be “a natural person” under the letter of U.S. patent laws. Still, Judge Leoine Brinkema acknowledged that “[a]s technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication such that it might satisfy the accepted meaning of inventorship. But that time has not yet arrived, and, if it does, it will be up to Congress to decide how, if at all, it wants to expand the scope of patent law.” Thaler v. Hirshfeld, Case No. 1:20-CV-903 (LMB/TCB) 2021 WL 3934803 (E.D. Va. Sept. 2, 2021).
The District Court’s decision is now on appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Thaler v. Hirshfeld, App No. 21-02347 (Fed. Cir. 2022).
