On April 18, 2023, we submitted a Supreme Court amicus brief expressing our encouragement for the justices to rule on the question of whether it is proper for an artificial intelligence (AI) to be an inventor on a patent application. The issue has arisen in the Petition for Writ of Certiorari recently filed by Dr. Stephen Thaler.
Dr. Thaler has alleged, so far without dispute, that his DABUS AI was the sole inventor of two ideas for which he filed patent applications. The USPTO refused to examine these inventions because DABUS was listed as the inventor. The USPTO contended that inventorship is restricted to natural persons only, a viewpoint that was also persuasive to a district court judge and then affirmed by the Federal Circuit. Dr. Thaler’s petition to the Supreme Court followed. Read more